Planning District Commission Meeting   5/6/2021

The meeting of the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission on the May 6th meeting to order.

Nope, I'd be happy to.

This meeting of the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission is being held pursuant to item 4.0-01 of the approved state budget HB 29 that allows public bodies to hold electronic meetings in the current COVID-19 emergency.

In that it is impracticable or unsafe to assemble in a single location and that the purpose of the meeting is to discuss or transact the business statutorily required or necessary to continue operations of the public body.

This meeting is being held via electronic video and audio means through Zoom online meetings and is accessible to the public with closed captioning.

And there will be an opportunity for public comment during that portion of the agenda.

Notice has been provided to the public through notice at the TJPDC offices, to the media, website posting and agenda.

The meeting minutes will reflect the nature of the emergency.

The meeting was held by electronic communication means

and the types of electronic communication means by which the meeting was held.

Thank you very much.

If for any reason, if people can hear me clearly, just let me know.

I am speaking tonight from the TJPDC through a mask as well.

So if you can't hear me, just let me know.

Now speak louder.

All right.

OK, we'll wait till

And Chair, just so you know, Ned Galloway will be joining us.

He's just finishing up the meeting.

Not sure exactly how much longer.

OK. That sounds great.

Thank you very much.

Let us know.

You talking to me?

Yeah, there you go.

Oh, yeah, I'm sorry.

I'm not used to be calling Mr. O'Brien.

But yes, I'm here.

Yeah, the first item tonight, we actually need to discuss the modifications to the agenda as presented.

We have added a closed session item.

They were up here before item number eight, before all their business.

If there is no disagreement or discussion on that, I'd like to have a motion to modify the agenda.

So moved.

Do we have a second?

Second.

I will not.

Price.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

I'll go through everyone.

Just in case I missed anybody that came in.

Mr. Payne?

Mr. Stolzenberg?

Mr. Galloway?

Mr. O'Brien?

Yes.

Ms. Wilkinson?

Aye.

Mr. Babich?

Mr. Barlow?

Ms. Bishop?

Aye.

And Mr.

Aye.

The motion passes.

We have a closed session item.

It will now be item number eight, and item number nine will be listed as other business.

The next item on the agenda is matters from the public.

Do we want to ask the public if they have any comments for anybody joining us?

I can go over that.

I know about hard.

For those who are in the public who wish to speak, if you're doing the video portion, there's a raise your hand option.

What you can do is go to participants and then choose raise your hand.

and the one that hosts will either identify you if you wish to speak.

If you're dialing in, I think it's like star nine, I believe is the option.

I'm not sure if it's short, I think it's star nine.

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

All right.

I'm sorry, I'm having a difficult, oh, shoot, hold on.

Oh.

All right.

All right, no problem.

Yes, sir.

I can hear you now.

No problem.

All right, with that said, we're moving on to item number three of the presentations.

We have three presentations.

One of those items is a public hearing.

That's item number A. Charise, this one is yours.

Thank you.

I'm going to share my screen.

So I'm presenting to you all information on the TJPDC home consortium.

Sorry, my computer's frozen.

One minute.

It does that.

There we go.

So I'm going to explain to you, give you a general overview on what the home federal program is and what the TJ Home Consortium does in connection with receiving these grant funds.

So the Home Investment Partnership Program is a federal grant program through HUD that issues grants to states

units of general local government to implement local housing strategies such as rehabilitating decent affordable housing to low income households, extending that should say extending the capacity of nonprofit housing providers, strengthening the ability of state and local governments to create affordable housing,

and leveraging private sector participation.

The goal is basically to increase affordable home ownership and access to affordable rental housing opportunities for low and very low income households.

So what does this program or how can the funds be used?

Excuse me.

The funds can be used by various different avenues to complete those goals, such as new construction, rehabilitation, down payment assistance, rental assistance, site improvements, acquisition of property, relocation costs, if

You are rebuilding and you need to relocate anyone nearby for a time period.

Project-related soft costs, activities of community development housing organizations, we call them CHODOs, and there's a certain portion that's set aside for program administration and planning capacity.

And

How do these grants make a difference in our area?

That's where the TJPDC home consortium comes in.

The home program serves the TJPDC home consortium, which consists of city of Charlottesville and the counties of Albemarle, Fluvanna, Greene, Louisa, and Nelson.

The city of Charlottesville is the lead entity for the consortium and the TJPDC consortium administers the home funds in the area throughout.

The consortium, we get about $600,000 a year and 85% of which is available to the localities chosen sub-recipients.

15% of it goes to admin.

The sub-recipients, they're listed here for Charlottesville, it's Habitat and PHA for Albemarle County, it's AHIP,

For Fluvanna, it's Fluvanna Louisa Housing Foundation.

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

For Greene, it's Skyline CAP.

And for Nelson, it's the Nelson County Community Development Foundation.

So I'm just going to go over a few of FY21, a few

of the wins.

I'm sorry, I went to the goals for next year.

Let's go one page back up.

So this year, thus far, we've spent $471,000, almost $500,000 in home funds.

Where those funds went, in Charlottesville, it was about a little under 200,000 to 22 families in need, which was help with down payment assistance and home rehabilitation.

Albemarle County, it was about 160,000, where it was home rehabilitation.

Fluvanna, this year we haven't spent anything there yet, but there are projects that are coming up that the money has already

been earmarked for, and you'll see that in the FY22 goals on the next slide.

In Greene, they are building two affordable new units.

That's a huge project where a lot of money has been committed to it, about $400,000.

But thus far this year, they've spent about 3,500 of those funds thus far in that effort.

Louisa has spent about $119,000 toward construction of one new affordable unit.

Nelson also has some projects in the upcoming year that they're working on, but thus far this year they've spent about $7,000.

We're gonna move on.

So for FY22 goals, and you'll see this in the annual action plan,

Charlottesville plans on spending about $20,000 to complete 20 homeowner rehab projects, about $40,000 for one major energy efficiency rehab, and about $24,000 for four low to moderate income down payment assistant projects.

Albemarle plans to spend about $85,000, their whole allocation, on five major home rehabs.

Fluvanna plans on spending about $30,000 to complete four home rehabs and use up to $55,000 toward constructing a low income senior community that must fall below the income limits provided by HUD within 80% AMI.

It will be available to residents within that 80% AMI.

Greene plans on using $10,000 to assist two first-time home buyers and about $75,000 to construct one affordable unit.

Louisa plans on spending about $85,000 to acquire land and construct one affordable rental unit.

And Nelson plans to use $50,000 to construct one affordable rental unit and use about $35,000 to rehabilitate a maximum of six substandard homes.

So if you guys have any questions for me about the program, how it's planned to be used in the upcoming year, fire away.

Thank you for the presentation.

Do we have any questions from the commissioners at this point in time?

This is a public hearing.

So at this point in time, if there's any members of the public that wish to make a comment, now's your time to do so.

And again, if you're using the Zoom video conferencing, if you remember the public, you're going to have participants, and you should see the option to raise your hand.

And one of the host members will recognize you and give you a chance to speak.

And Sandy or Christine, are we seeing anybody raising their hands?

If not, we'll go ahead and close the public hearing.

Thank you, Charissa.

I appreciate that.

You may want to hang around for a little bit.

All right.

The second presentation we have tonight is the Urban Rivanna River Plan update.

Yeah, let me go ahead and pull up my screen.

And Charisse, Christine, if one of you could keep an eye, just if anybody else comes in that I need to record their attendance, just keep an eye on when they come in so I can add that to the minutes, that would be helpful.

Alright, I saw Mr. Payne just joined us.

So two of the commissioners that are with us tonight have seen this recently.

So Miss Price and Mr. Payne, if there's anything you want to add, please feel free to to jump in and

and add any insights that you would like to include.

Just to give you a little- Wrap it up.

Getting there.

So just to give you all a little bit of background information, this is a joint effort between Albemarle County and the City of Charlottesville and planning for the shared use jointly between Albemarle and Charlottesville was a goal that was identified during one of the joint Board of Supervisors meetings.

This was originally approached thinking that this would happen in three different phases.

So the first phase was completed in 2018 and that was an inventory of the existing conditions.

So looking at things like land use, zoning, environmental features like steep slopes and floodplains, public property, that kind of thing.

So currently we're in phase two, which is really the planning and visioning phase.

So this is where we're looking at what the high level goals and recommendations are for the river and really defining what it is that the corridor should look like and how should it function.

And then moving forward, originally this was planned to be a three phase project.

And so then coming out of that visioning phase, the next phase will be determined if there's continued interest in pursuing this to be an actual master plan for the urban corridor.

And so that's when we would be looking at identifying specific parcels of land and planning on the ground, project implementation, that kind of thing.

So right now we're in phase two and hopefully we'll be wrapping that up.

I'll say a few months as long as you guys know that I mean a few pretty liberally.

And this just gives you a map of where the general project area is.

It starts up at the north end at Penn Park and then it ends at the south.

It ends right at where the river crosses, well, I guess I-64 crosses the river.

So that's the general project area.

I don't remember the exact project length.

I think it's a little over three miles.

And then of course, we're looking at the river on both the Albemarle County and the city of Charlottesville side.

This is just a really brief overview of the activity that we've conducted while doing this planning study.

So the project kicked off in July 2019.

We did an initial outreach at an event that was being held at one of the parks in the River Corridor in September 2019.

and started developing some of the background information, putting together some initial goals and high level discussions of what the purpose of this planning study was going to be.

And then we were planning to do a lot more in-person outreach starting in the spring of 2020.

And as you guys are aware, we had a little global pandemic that popped up there.

So that delayed us a little bit.

We kind of thought we were just going to wait it out until we had more opportunities to do on the ground outreach and realize mid-summer that we probably needed to go back and reconsider what our public engagement was going to be.

And so in August, we created a new engagement strategy to do some of the outreach virtually and using our

online web-based opportunities to do that.

We continue to do research into the fall, doing community outreach and looking at other peer communities to conduct some benchmarking.

And then after we completed most of that, we really started just focusing in on drafting the

different sections of the plan and developing recommendations.

So we had a full plan with an initial set of recommendations that we provided to the technical committee, which was made up of county and city staff by the end of December.

And then we went through some iterations with them to let them do some edits and provide some feedback.

And we most recently provided a plan to the Rivanna River Steering Committee

along with the draft recommendations that had been vetted through the technical committee.

And so we had a meeting at the end of last month on April 26th to discuss the recommendations and the plan content to date with the steering committee.

So as I mentioned, we had to revamp our public engagement process.

So instead of going to neighborhood association meetings and hanging out at the at the river corridor and interviewing people, what we ended up doing was really utilizing all of the interests that the public had

and basically needing to have places to gather outside during a pandemic when it wasn't safe to gather inside.

While we don't have any data to confirm this necessarily, what we heard a lot of was that

There was just like it was just really busy on the river right now.

People needed a place to go.

They needed places to be able to spend time with people.

And so the river ended up being a really important asset to meet that need for the community during this time.

So we really made sure that we had a well-developed project website that had the most current information available on it.

And one of the things that we did was we utilized the traffic at the river corridor.

We put up signs along the river to let people know we're doing this plan, to direct them to the website, to give them an opportunity to provide their comments and feedback.

We also scheduled two public webinars in October.

And again, to make sure that we were giving everybody who might be interested an opportunity to participate and make sure that they were aware of the planning effort, we sent physical mailings out to everybody within a specified buffer of the project area.

We got that information from the

Albemarle County and Charlottesville City staff.

And then we also emailed a notice to stakeholder group contacts that had been identified through the technical committee as maybe having some specific interests, so places like the Chamber of Commerce or environmental groups or nonprofits, things like that.

This is a little bit tangential, but at the same time that we were doing this planning study on the corridor as a whole, we were also conducting a feasibility study with VDOT to determine what some potential options might be to

to site a bridge for pedestrian and bike access across the river.

And so there ended up being a lot of overlap in the people that were interested in both of these efforts and a lot of discussion across both of these.

So we also, in conjunction with the public engagement that we were doing for the river plan, we also scheduled a public webinar on the feasibility study findings in November.

And that helped us just to create a little bit of continuity between the two planning efforts that even though they were really separate processes, a lot of the same people were interested.

And then the last thing that we did that was really helpful was once we got all the public feedback and got some and let the steering committee give us feedback on our first round of

of recommendations and guiding principles and, you know, those sort of visionary statements to sort of shape things moving forward.

We met with subject matter experts in smaller groups to focus more on specific sets of recommendations.

So we met with people like the chief of police and the emergency services coordinator for the joint Albemarle County Charlottesville emergency services response.

or people who had expertise in local history, as well as some of the technical experts from the technical committee that was staffed by the county and city staff.

And then I mentioned as well the other piece of the data that we did was we looked at several other corridor plans and other localities just to pull pieces of what they were doing and make sure that you know we were being consistent with the with the other types of planning efforts that we thought had had gone really well and to see if there were things that we could pull out of those plans that would also apply to

The Rivanna River Corridor.

Richmond and Greenville were the two that rose to the top.

But we also looked at Lynchburg and Fredericksburg as smaller localities that had really successful planning efforts, understanding that what we were trying to accomplish with the Rivanna River Plan was not really at all exactly the same as any of these other plans.

We just wanted to look at them and see what we could pull out of these or what really good ideas or suggestions they had that maybe isn't exactly the same as we want to do for Charlottesville, but will still help inform our process.

You can see what some of the common themes were and then what some of the other considerations that were included in those plans were that may not have been consistent across all of them, but still provided some really good information.

All right, so after we went through a vetting process with the Steering Committee and the public webinars, we refined our vision statement, which you can read here.

The important thing about the vision statement is that there wasn't one specific...

There wasn't one specific purpose that was identified for the river, but it was really a goal to balance a lot of different interests, to find a place where the river as an environmental asset was being protected.

People could recreate, businesses had opportunities to

To serve the public there, they could tap into the river as an asset without really disturbing nature too much and also making sure that we use this as an opportunity to raise awareness and help inform people of the rich history and the cultural impacts that the river has had on different communities throughout their existence.

So those were the high level goals.

And then from there, we created these guiding principles, which again, just kind of helped us stay on track of as we are developing recommendations, as we are thinking about the purpose of the river, this is what's going to help us hone in and really clarify what we want the goal of this plan to be.

So we started out with all of these

I think there were six or seven wedges and all of these wedges were in a circle together.

And the reason we put them in the circle together is we wanted to make it really clear that there wasn't a single priority.

The purpose of this river corridor plan was not to be a recreation plan or just a conservation plan or an economic development plan, but to really take all of these interests and find the appropriate balance of all of them.

However, after we discussed this with the steering committee initially, and then we heard the same thing from the public, what ended up happening is that basically if we were going to make environmental protection a priority, it had to be the highest priority.

And we had to consider that first and foremost.

And so environmental protection really emerged as the ring around the circle.

We considered that first.

And as long as we were making sure that we were protecting

The environmental character of the river and the water quality and the riparian system in general, as long as we have that environmental protection piece in place, we could then balance the other parts equally.

So environmental protection was the most important and then from there we balanced the economic development and the recreation and the historic preservation and those other pieces.

And then as I mentioned, we went through a series of developing recommendations on the following topics, environmental protection, recreational activities, health and safety, development, redevelopment, historic places, multipurpose trails and bridges.

I won't go into the details of the recommendations.

The plan is on our website if you're interested in learning more about it.

But at this point, our next steps, as I mentioned, we just presented all this to the steering committee.

So we're going to need to incorporate their feedback into our next plan document.

Then we also have some formatting to do to take it from a basic Word document into something that is formatted more visually.

Our next step after that will be to schedule some informational presentations at the Planning Commission.

and City Council and Board of Supervisors meetings, just to give the entire boards and commissions an opportunity to review the plan before we ask them to take any action on it and see if there are any other feedback that we need to consider.

And then we will schedule public hearings for adoption of the plan once we're ready to move forward on that.

One thing I do want to mention that came out of that discussion is that there was some interest expressed from the Steering Committee in making sure that we had made some connections with the Monacan tribe to make sure that they have an opportunity to review the plan and provide their feedback into recommendations.

So Mr Payne and Ms Price, I especially just wanted to mention that we're working right now to make that contact and to identify the

appropriate liaison at that point.

But that's just a really brief overview of the plan and where we are.

Thank you.

Does anybody have any questions for Sandy at this point in time?

Great presentation.

Thank you.

The next presentation we have is Mr. Blount is the legislative update.

All right.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

There's a memo in your packet.

It's a one-page memo that just gives some brief highlights of the session, some of the main

As you know, the General Assembly met the House virtually with folks scattered out all across the state.

The Senate was in the Science Museum of Virginia in Richmond.

So in both cases, there was no public allowed.

So that presented some challenges like we've never seen before, but you know, fortunately they were able to get through it and get their work done.

And I think from my standpoint,

In dealing with the legislative delegation in this region, we were able to do so effectively, communicating by email and text and phone call.

And I think it all worked out pretty well.

Fortunately, there were just a few locally requested bills that were introduced.

So that certainly helped to reduce the workload.

The legislators were limited in the number of bills that they could introduce.

But that also freed me up to be able to focus on some of the other issues that in another year when there are more local bills, I wouldn't have the bandwidth to do.

But you probably heard, I mean, it's been two months since the session wrapped up additional money for salaries for both teachers and state supported local employees.

The General Assembly went along with the Governor's introduced budget for putting $50 million in for the VODI program, the broadband program.

And in fact, the process has started for the fiscal year 22 VODI grant program.

They're doing some revisions to the guidelines right now.

Probably will open up the application window right before the end of the fiscal year.

I think applications are due in September and they usually try to make those announcements of awards by the end of the calendar year.

But $50 million, that's a long way from where we were three or four years ago when there was only $4 million in state money available.

But I can also tell you that in fiscal year 21 with $50 million, there was about $105 million in requests for that money.

So I think we'll just continue to see those requests

continue to go up.

Money for K-12 education, I mentioned the salaries also just in some no loss, hold harmless type money.

Money into the housing trust fund, which was pretty significant, I think it's its highest level ever.

There's actually going to be an increased state payment to planning district commissions.

Each PDC is going to get about $14,000 more.

then in fiscal year 21.

And what that does, it doesn't mean that we're going to be flushed with cash.

It means that we're still back billing because that money is going to bring us back to about the level that the PDC's funding was from the state in 2009.

So it's still playing catch up there.

And hopefully at some point we'll be able to move forward and get some more.

And then there was also a transportation initiative.

Probably the most significant thing for our region is as part of a passenger rail initiative in that transportation plan.

It's going to provide for some increased capacity along our Route 29 rail corridors.

There's also some money for trails, regional trails, $10 million, I believe.

And that program will be forthcoming in terms of how that money is going to be divvied up, I guess.

A couple of areas that we didn't have success on, but we'll continue to work on.

We've had a lot of discussion among the localities during the last year about the state having swiped some recordation tax funds.

And we'll try to get that back, both the governor's budget as well as the budget amendments, but we're not in that aspect.

So we will continue to work on that.

We also tried to, and I guess maybe partially successful, try to ease the impact of some coming changes in health department funding.

And the funding formula had not been updated for, I believe, close to 50 years.

So what the result is for, I believe, four of our six localities, there's going to be an increase in the local match requirement for that program.

But fortunately that is going to be spread out over three years.

We were hoping to have it delayed and then phased in, but they are starting to phase in this year, but what with the two year, which we were advocating, went with a three year instead of a two year phase in that we were talking about.

So end result may be about the same, but there will be some fiscal impact there.

Just a couple of bills I would mention in the memo.

The bill concerning electronic meetings.

The authority that we have to be here this evening as Sandy read at the beginning of the meeting is contained in the state budget.

There was a bill that will take effect July 1st that very similarly will allow for electronic meetings when there is a declared state of emergency.

I heard today the governor had one of his COVID updates that they are looking at the middle of June and depending on where the CDC guidance is at that point, possibly relaxing the mask mandate for public places.

If that's the case, and again, you have to have an executive order in place in order to be able to require masks in public because otherwise

There's other provisions of the code that don't allow that.

So if we get to the point where there is still a need or desire to have that mask requirement in public places, then you may see that executive order, that state of emergency continued even longer.

But as of right now, that will be in effect, the state of emergency actually will be in effect until the end of June and would have to be extended

either for continuing to require the mask or just if there was a desire to have that emergency stay in place.

Talked a little bit in the memo about the marijuana legislation, still kind of a work in progress.

I think the most significant thing on the horizon beyond the immediacy of legal possession in certain circumstances taking effect July 1 will be the opportunity that local governments have

next year to hold a referendum on whether to prohibit retail sales of marijuana in your locality.

Right now under the legislation, those retail sales would not be able to take effect until 2024, but your referendum authorization would be next year.

So a lot of studies this year, a couple in the housing area, a couple in the transportation area, about agencies, JLARC, they just seem to be spread out all over the place.

We're also looking at a special session that will be happening sometime this summer because the General Assembly put some language in the state budget that says that any federal funding that comes to the state that is related to pandemic relief has to be appropriated by the legislature.

And they gave the governor that authority to do that, certainly in the circumstances that we had last spring.

But there will be the need for a special session to at least address appropriation of those funds that are coming from the federal government.

I'm hearing late July, early August.

Hopefully it will not be a long session.

My guess is the House will not want it to be a long session since those members are going to be up for election in November and will want to be on the campaign trail.

That's really all I wanted to share with you tonight.

I will say with Dominique's help, we put together a summary of both the budget and all of the bills of interest to local governments that is ready to go and hopefully will be in your inbox sometime tomorrow.

Any questions for David this time?

Thank you, sir.

Appreciate that.

Next item is consent agenda.

We have two action items.

The minutes and the quarterly financial and activities report.

We'll take these individually if there's no disagreement.

We'll start with the minutes of April 1st, the 2012 meeting.

Do we have any changes or modifications to those minutes?

We got a second?

Second.

Thank you.

I would be happy to.

Mr. Stolzenberg is not here.

I don't believe.

Ms. Price?

Aye.

Mr. O'Brien?

Aye.

Mr. Smith?

Aye.

Mr. Babyok is not here still.

Ms. Bishop?

Abstain.

All right.

And Mr.

Aye.

Thank you very much.

The minutes have passed.

The next Iowa consent agenda is to correlate financial and activities reports.

Please excuse that scrolling.

I apologize.

OK, so our net quick assets have increased to just over $800,000.

We now have over 7.5 months in available operating expenses.

The goal is five months, so everything in excess of that goal

is our capital reserve.

So our capital reserve is about $287,000.

Unrestricted cash on hand, making gains here.

As of March, we're at $318,000 or 3.02 months of average monthly operating expenses.

Four is our goal.

So we're still working towards our goal, but we're now easing away from that concern level of just two months.

We're also in good shape there.

Use the scroll again, I apologize.

It's not always easy on the screen.

There we go.

Revenue less expenses.

We actually had a very successful March.

It is surprisingly our largest net gain in a single month as an agency.

And so we had a net gain of just over $52,000 for the month.

Obviously, the majority of that is due to our personnel changeover.

We have some lower operating expenses with Mr. Boyles having moved on.

But it's also because we had some unbudgeted revenue for a change order in the Cherry Avenue plan.

And also a lot of our programs are due for their four or five year update.

And so many of them kicked off this month.

So we were billing to programs that we hadn't previously been billing to.

So we've had a pretty good month in March.

As far as our profit and loss, we are nine months through the year.

So we are 75% through the year.

We've received 84% of our revenue and we have expended 83% of what was budgeted.

So we're also in really good shape there.

As far as operating expenses only, at the 75% mark through the year, we've received 73% of that revenue and we've spent down 71.

So we're also on target for doing that.

And then accrued revenue.

I'd love to excuse the scroll again.

I'm sorry, I'm going to have to go through the two PNLs.

Over the next two months, I'm going to show you all small changes that I'm making to the accrued revenue report, just to make it a little bit more user friendly, easier to read.

So most of that is all formatting.

I'm also going to split the programs.

Thank you, Keith and Andrea, for your support and your help in doing this, splitting the programs by those that have passed through funds and those that do not.

So it's a little easier for us to track each of those different grants.

Next month, I'll also show you a couple more revisions that I would recommend for the FY22 year.

As far as approved revenue, we have $442,000 just above that in operating the funds available through the remainder of the year.

With three months remaining, that gives us $147,000 a month.

Puts us in really good shape.

Last month's operating expenses were $94,000.

So we have more revenue than we need.

Likely, what we're anticipating, which is a little bit hard to tell right now since so many of our projects have just kicked off.

For example, the Albemarle Transit expansion, the Regional Transit Vision Plan,

There is a possibility that we will have funds that we will roll into FY22 if they're not expended in the next three months, which will actually help our FY22 budget and closing that gap that we have.

I'm happy to take any questions on the quarterly financial update that you guys might have.

Do we have any questions for Christine?

Thank you, sir.

Do we have a second?

Second.

Thank you.

No, and I'm so sorry.

I did not catch who the second was.

Mm-hmm.

Thank you.

Mr. Stolzenberg?

Ms. Price.

Aye.

Mr. Babiak.

Ms. Bishop.

Aye.

And Mr.

Aye.

Thank you very much.

for the financial activities report that's passed.

The next time is we have four resolutions that stand and we'll apologize in advance under all our role-called votes to go through tonight.

We do appreciate that.

The first item, the first resolution we have on the agenda is the Home Annual Action Plan fiscal year 2022.

And Charise and Christine, I guess I'll pass this floor.

It would be Charise?

No, that'll be me.

Okay.

Thank you.

No worries.

I appreciate your presentation earlier.

This is the action that follows that.

And so, in the fall is when home will be conducting the five year consolidated plan.

Tonight, what we're looking at is just the annual action plan as presented.

And so the commission considers that annual action plan in May of each year.

just prior to the required submission date of May 15th to HUD.

Do we have any discussion?

I move to approve this as presented.

Thank you.

We have a proper motion and a second.

No.

Mr. Stolzenberg?

Ms. Price?

Aye.

Yep.

Somebody, he did drop off.

I'll make a note of that.

Ms. Wilkinson.

Aye.

Mr. Babiak.

Ms. Bishop.

Aye.

And Mr.

Aye.

The resolution passes.

Just a reminder for those who are still connected, if you drop off, please feel free to join back.

Somebody will let you back into the meeting.

Also, public members, if you're watching, if you drop off, do the same.

We'll let you back in.

It can happen this time of the year, storms, and with connectivity issues throughout the rural areas.

All right, the next item is the Fiscal Year 22 Operating Budget, Revenues, and Work Plan.

Thank you.

Chairman.

The draft FY22 operating budget and memo were presented at the previous April commission meeting.

Surprisingly, there's only one minor revision to that budget.

Everything else is as is from last month.

So I spared you guys another five or six page memo to read.

I will just detail that one small change.

And then if you all have questions, I'm happy to take them.

The one small change is that the Thomas Jefferson Community Land Trust did submit a 30 day notice to terminate the contract between the PDC and the land trust.

And so I removed that line item.

It had a pretty nominal effect on the budget somewhere in the two to three thousand dollar range overall.

And so otherwise the budget as presented tonight for your consideration is the same as last month.

I can remind you all that from the FY22 budget that it does have revenues and expenditures balanced at 3.19 million and that there's about a 50, almost $55,000 revenue shortfall.

Anticipated, we do have a great deal of confidence that there are several large pipeline projects that will close that gap fairly rapidly right at the beginning of the fiscal year.

However, just want to keep that noted.

The budget does include staff salary increases at 3% and it includes funding for an additional full-time planner, which we will fill as soon as we are certain that we have the funds to cover that expense.

The Finance Committee did review this budget, and then if anybody has any questions, I'm happy to take them.

Thank you.

Any questions for Christine at this time?

Thank you, sir.

Do we have a second?

Second.

Mr. Stolzenberg?

Ms. Price?

Aye.

Mr. O'Brien?

I don't think he came back on.

Miss Bishop?

Aye.

And Mr.

Aye.

The resolution passes.

Thank you.

Excellent.

The Regional Housing Partnership underwent a half-day strategic planning retreat back in 2019 to identify its first set of priorities.

They are now due, seeing as they have completed nearly everything on that list of priorities.

It's been a very productive two years for the Regional Housing Partnership.

They're due for a full-blown strategic planning process where we engage all stakeholders in the community to develop

The direction for that partnership.

And so Virginia Housing actually offers a grant track for housing related agencies that we are eligible for.

So this resolution is really requesting of the commission permission to issue an RFP.

As a part of the grant application, you have to have already pre-selected a consultant and collected all of the documentation.

This grant is also on a reimbursement basis.

So we would be paying 20% and then recuperating that once we completed the deliverable if it were awarded.

And so again, happy to take any questions related to this.

Very excited about this opportunity for the partnership.

It's in a really good place.

I think developmentally it's going on to the next stages of a healthy organization.

Thank you.

I guess the only comment I have is we're expected to be successful likely with Virginia Housing.

It is very likely.

We have been in very close contact with Virginia Housing throughout the whole partnership and all of the different initiatives that we've had.

So there's no reason to believe we wouldn't get it, but also I've heard from several different housing associations or partnerships that a lot of people are growing after that grant funding.

So unless it's more competitive and more as requested, we have a good likelihood of getting it.

Any additional questions?

Thank you, sir.

Thank you.

We have a proper motion and second.

First night.

Mr. Stolzenberg?

Ms. Price?

Aye.

Mr. O'Brien?

He's still not here.

Ms. Wilkinson?

Aye.

Mr. Babiak?

Mr. Barlow?

Yes.

Ms. Bishop?

Aye.

and Mr.

Thank you very much and appreciate that.

The next and last resolution for the night, not the last vote, but the last resolution is a resolution to be issued to request proposals from marketing agency to create live share of marketing materials.

Hey Flint.

The FY22 Rideshare budget approved funding that was also approved by the Department of Rail and Public Transportation, the RPT, for advertising with the pandemic.

The RPT put a hold on any expenditures related to advertising ride sharing for safety reasons.

The CTV meeting in April

They went ahead and improved a budget revision.

We are now allowed to advertise.

However, we are not allowed to advertise ride sharing.

So what we're proposing is to get a consultant to issue an RFP to get a consultant to develop a marketing content library that can be used post pandemic.

So once we're ready to begin

Advertising, again, we'll have a series of materials that we can use at that point.

We do have to spend this money by June of this year, so we thought the best way to do that was get a consultant to go ahead and develop all of those for us so that it's done in short order.

With that, again, happy to take questions on that one.

This one is just a resolution to issue the RFP.

For this one, we will do one of two things.

We do know of a marketing

Ferm that is part of the state contract.

So we will either issue the RFP or we will go with an approved state contract on this one.

Thank you.

Any questions for Christine?

Hearing none, do we have a motion to approve resolutions for Senate?

So moved.

I motion.

Do I second?

Second.

Got a motion, a proper second.

Mr. Stolzenberg?

Mr. O'Brien?

Ms. Wilkinson?

Aye.

Mr. Babyok?

Ms. Bishop?

Aye.

and Mr.

Aye.

The resolution passes.

Thank you.

On to item of new business.

There's a presentation of the TJPDC auction slate for the nominating committee for the fiscal year 2022.

And I have listed Andrew as the spokesperson.

Works for me.

I know it.

I'm sorry.

All right, sir.

Well, the nominating committee, which was Mr. Galloway, Andrea, and myself,

are recommending for chair, Mr. Jesse Rutherford, for vice chair, Mr. Dale Herring, treasurer, Mr. Keith Smith, and secretary, Ms. Christine Jacobs.

And I've contacted each and all are willing to serve.

Thank you.

Do we have any additional nominations from the commissioners?

Hearing none, Ms. Slade has been presented.

We voted on it in the June meeting.

Thank you, Ned, Tommy, and Andrea for your participation in this process.

Appreciate that.

Moving right along to item number seven, the interim executive director's report.

All right.

Couple of quick updates for you all.

The first one is related to a SmartScale application that we submitted for Nelson County back in round three.

It was for an R cut at the intersection of Route 29 and Route 6.

The project was approved with an anticipated start date in 2023, with construction not completing until 2028.

So in the meantime, they did a small highway safety improvement project where they put up actually did flashing beacons.

and it actually produced the desired effect of reducing crashes at that intersection and so VDOT recommended that we cancel that project so the funds could be returned to the district.

Nelson's Board of Supervisors approved that in their April meeting.

TJPDC submitted a letter to support that cancellation and in our letter we requested that those funds that they consider putting those funds back towards Nelson and not just towards the full district.

Second update I have for you is housing preservation grants that has been on our coming up next month list for two months in a row.

We've reached out to USDA.

They are currently undergoing some internal changes in their organization.

And so that program is likely to be administered by a different part of USDA from their single family units to their multifamily unit.

So I'm just letting you all know we're keeping our eye on that.

We don't yet know if there's additional funds coming through HPG related to the Recovery Act.

However, we are paying attention to that.

So as soon as they issue that notice of funding availability, we do intend to apply as always.

Third update is the TJPDC Corporation Board will stay consistent for FY22.

So there's no request of you all for nominations.

Right now, those that are appointed from the PDC are Ms. Genevieve Keller from Charlottesville.

Ms. Donna Price from Albemarle, Mr. Keith Smith from Fluvanna, Ms. Andrea Wilkinson from Greene, Mr. Babyok from Louisa, and Mr. Ernie Reed was from Nelson.

And so all of them have agreed to continue to serve on that board so that we will keep that consistent into the next year.

Housing Speaker Series put on by the Regional Housing Partnership had another very successful event.

I can say I had small concerns because there was a very important competing housing related webinar at the exact same time related to the Red Carpet Inn.

And we still had over 50 participants and they had over 100.

So there are a lot of people very engaged and very interested in the work that's going on related to affordable housing.

That session was about affordable housing performance.

and Development Financing and determining what is feasible when doing affordable housing development.

There are two more events still coming.

One of them is right around the corner and that's about transportation and housing.

And the one that follows that is about equity in housing and they're free and we would encourage you all to listen in.

They're both available registrations free on the website, the PDC website.

I see Mr. Smith, did you wanna add something to that one?

I saw you raise your hand.

I was clapping.

Other than you're awesome.

Next one is Regional Transit Partnership Work Plan.

This year we did create a work plan with the RTP's input.

This is something that is new for us to have actually a structured plan that we will follow throughout a year so that we can anticipate the work that will come out of that partnership.

The plan right now includes supporting the two transit grants, a peer city virtual workshop series.

We're going to look at other cities similar to ours that have successful transit and talk through some of their wins and some of their challenges that they've had so we can learn from others in the state.

Then we will also be doing for that one, a strategic plan is due.

So we'll be preparing for that and then ongoing information sharing as we always do.

So the RTP is geared up to have a very busy year.

And we're really excited about the momentum and the really the synergy around what's going on in transit and all the studies going on in the region.

The Albemarle transit expansion and implementation plan through DRPT selection committee identified the consultant, Michael Baker and Foursquare as the sub-consultants.

They have the strongest proposal.

We have issued a notice to proceed.

and the kickoff meeting for that was today.

So that has begun and we anticipate starting off really strong and trying to stay on schedule from the beginning.

That one has a tight timeline.

The majority of the deliverables are done by January of 22 with the project complete by April of 22.

So that's a quick one.

The regional transit vision plan for the regional study, we did issue a request for proposals for that.

The due date for that was actually this week.

We received three very strong proposals.

The selection committee is meeting on Monday to review through those proposals.

So we're very pleased with the progress there as well.

Two more updates.

One is Virginia Housing.

As I told you guys in a previous meeting, they are developing a new grant track.

They specifically want to issue that money through planning district commissions based on the size of our region.

We would be eligible for up to $2 million.

It is a non-competitive grant, meaning they have enough funding for all planning district commissions.

If they were to apply for the full amount, they have enough funding to cover that.

So we anticipate pretty good success with that grant application.

This is specifically to develop new units.

So this would not be for preservation, for down payment assistance.

This would be sticks in the ground is what they're looking for.

We anticipate for this really the TJPDC becoming a grant maker in this one where we would be then issuing our own notice out to other agencies to apply for that funding.

We have a lot of work.

We're waiting the program guidelines.

We don't yet have as much information about it yet, but as soon as they are released, we will be following up.

We've already been a part of small focus groups.

and a larger meeting with the VA PDC.

So we're very interested in that opportunity for our region.

And the last one, we will be utilizing three interns this summer, which is a large number for a staff of 11.

One intern is going to be working with Charisse with the home program, doing research on that.

A second intern is going to be working with one of our transportation planners, Jessica, and they'll be doing research on equitable driver appreciation.

and a third intern which hasn't confirmed yet but we feel strong is working with Dominique on watershed improvement plan deliverables.

All three of those interns are unpaid but they are paid through the university so they will all receive stipends for that and they are all through the Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy.

We have signed an unofficial official partnership with them to provide internship opportunities

But we are not committed every year.

We can determine whether or not we have a project that we have available to them.

Great.

Thank you.

Great news.

Do we have any questions for Christine or the report?

Do we have a resolution for the session?

We do.

All right.

Mr.

There you go.

Yeah.

There you go.

Christine, this is Ned, I had to call back in, my apologies.

The internships, I presume they have a final project write-up, something like that, that's an end goal?

I would just, as I'm thinking about it, would be obviously interested in seeing what those are if they exist.

I mean, the projects sound interesting and I think

Absolutely reasonable.

And I think that's great.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

Comments?

If not, the next agenda item is one we amended as a closed session.

At this point, I'm going to ask a commissioner to make the motion to enter closed session by reading the motion as presented in your packet.

Yeah, go ahead.

All right.

I move to enter closed session.

I, Jesse Rutherford, move it close that the commission be convened to a closed session pursuant to personnel exemption found in section 2.2-3711A1 of the Code of Virginia to discuss an individual employee assignment.

I need a second.

Thank you.

OK, could you roll call vote, Sandy?

All right, I'm so sorry.

Mr. Stolzenberg?

Mr. Galloway?

Yes.

Ms. Price?

Aye.

Mr. O'Brien?

Ms. Wilkinson?

Ms. Wilkinson?

I know.

I wouldn't unmute.

I mean, I tried 12 times.

I forgot I.

We heard you then.

Mr. Babyok?

Mr. Barlow?

Yes.

Ms. Bishop?

Aye.

And Mr.

Aye.

And for anybody who's from the public, there will be no action from the closed session meeting.

So we have people from the public.

When we come back in, there will be no action at this point in time.

So with that stated, we will have those individuals either physically remove themselves from the room, or those that are in a virtual session, we would place you back probably in the waiting room

and then we'll readmit you if you're still there after the closed session is finished.

At this time, I'm going to remove Ms. Shackelford and Ms. Franklin and myself.

Sandy, as co-host, can you move out?

Can I just be a co-host?

Would that be okay with you?

Yeah, that's fine.

I'll just go ahead and leave.

I'll let you know when we're out, okay?

Thanks, guys.

I just removed that the commission exit closed session.

Second.

We have a second.

Oh, I'd be happy to.

It looks like we might have, yeah, see if we still have everybody.

Mr. Stolzenberg?

Mr. Galloway?

Yes.

Ms. Price?

Aye.

Mr. O'Brien?

Ms. Wilkinson?

Ms. Bishop?

Aye.

And Mr.

At this point, I'll need a motion to certify.

Aye.

Just a relative move that the commission certify that to the best of each member's knowledge of only public business matter lawfully exempted from the open meeting requirements of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act

and identified in the motion authorizing the closed session were heard, discussed, are considered in the closed session.

Second.

Thank you.

Mr. Stolzenberg?

Mr. Galloway?

Yes.

Ms. Grace?

Aye.

Mr. O'Brien?

Ms. Wilkinson?

Aye.

Mr. Babiak?

Ms. Bishop?

Aye.

Mr. Rutherford?

Aye.

And Mr.

Aye.

Thank you very much.

On to item number eight, the roundtable discussion.

So again, as I always say, being virtual and things

Be in a different environment this time.

If I miss you, it is not intentional at all.

So please speak out when the time comes if I have missed you in this prior discussion.

And with that said, what I'll do is I'll just pick the squares as I see them.

Well, we're kind of moving along in a slow lane right now with some of the

projects or big businesses that we've been trying to get to come into Louisa, I think they're going to actually happen.

We had a pretty big Internet announcement, and I think we have a couple of large companies coming in that we're going to be able to announce shortly.

Thank you, sir.

Yeah, I just was smiling about what Tommy said about the JRWA.

That's been going on since 1987, since I've been involved in that in some way, shape or form.

I wasn't able to make the board meeting last night and Tony isn't here to report in.

I don't think I have too much other than thank you for continued support from staff on the Regional Housing Partnership.

We're doing some wonderful work and couldn't do it without the staff.

And I wanted to personally say thank you to all the jurisdictions who adopted the fair housing resolution that I sent out to all.

So thank you.

It's not a silver bullet.

We're not fixing fair housing, but to get all the jurisdictions to be making the same statement, I think was a huge step forward to that.

So I just wondered while all the folks were listening to say thank you to each and every one of you for taking that on and adopting it.

Ms. Price.

Thank you and a very minor point of order.

This is now item number nine since we added number eight as the closed session just for the next minute.

We approved last night our calendar year 2021 tax rates and adoption of the FY 2022 operating and capital budget.

We did not increase our tax rates this year.

We spent a good bit of time last night talking about private and public streets.

The big problem of course with private roads is a few years down the road when the maintenance comes due and the HOA has stopped collecting the money and then the homeowners come to the county and say we want you to fix our road that's falling apart because we didn't put our money aside.

While it would be nice to get rid of private roads, we also know that there are situations where they really are essential to be able to allow the development to take place because of geographic constraints in terms of terrain and other sorts of things, but it's definitely an area that we want to continue to work on.

We'd like to discourage private roads as much as possible and have the roads, when they're built, be adopted into the state system for maintenance purposes, but there's no way that we're going to be able to do that on every situation.

We spend a good bit of time talking about our fiscal year 22 community development work program where, candidly, the supervisors are our own worst enemy as we approve things to be put on the plan and then every month come up with new things we want to add to the plan which makes it difficult to complete the things we've already approved to be done on the plan.

So I think we have to herd cats a little better probably amongst ourselves as much as anything.

And we, of course, like every other jurisdiction, we're looking at the pandemic.

We want to, or I can speak only for myself, not for the whole board, but I definitely would like to see our county be consistent with what the state

is going to be doing so that our businesses are not finding themselves in a situation where the state may have relaxed things more than the county has, particularly as we're getting close to the three major holidays where so much of our tourism business, they make their money, which is Memorial Day, July 4th, and Labor Day.

It does look from everything that we can see that the state is getting close to being able to relax almost all of the regulations, the requirements.

We're very fortunate that Central Virginia is doing better than virtually anywhere else in the Commonwealth and most of the nation.

But we still have to be vigilant.

And so we'll be working more on that again in our next meeting.

And I'll leave it to Chair

and the Regional Cigarette Tax Administration Board.

Thank you.

Well, I don't have a whole lot down there.

I'd like to brag a little bit on our staff.

As Donna mentioned, or Supervisor Price mentioned, we passed our budget last night.

We're very proud of the work they did when they had to do an about space a year ago in the face of the pandemic and basically in a matter of weeks go back and rewrite the entire budget and now this year bringing through the budget process still with some unknowns dealing with federal dollars how all of that goes out for them to work through the budget this year and get it to us for a vote last night was great.

I'm sure a lot of you feel the same way about your staff that are working on the budget but

I don't get too many times to be able to say that, our county executive, his team, her CFO, and her budget team just did a phenomenal job this year.

It's appreciated and helpful.

Thank you, sir.

Yeah, I guess I'll start with bad news and go on to good news.

The bad news is Charlottesville is still really continuing to struggle with historic rise in gun violence.

I don't know how closely people have been following that issue, but we had another report of shots fired today, which marks the 103rd report of shots fired this year in five months in the city of Charlottesville.

So we continue to work with our police department and community groups to try to figure out what we can do to address this issue.

But we certainly haven't found an answer.

And it continues to be perhaps the biggest issue we're facing right now in Charlottesville.

It's accelerating as we enter the summer months.

More positive news, UVA announced publicly their commitment to build over a thousand affordable units over the next decade.

Not a whole lot of details at this point.

They said they want to hear from localities, community groups, nonprofits to figure out the specifics of what that may look like.

But they've publicly announced their commitment, which is huge and really a game changer.

for UVA's involvement on housing in community initiatives compared to where UVA was, say, a decade ago or even a few years ago, which is huge positive news.

We broke ground on the resident-led redevelopment of Crescent Halls, one of our public housing sites for elderly residents, which was a big historic step.

And Joy Johnson, one of the,

The leader of the Public Housing Association of Residence and one of the leaders of our public housing groups was honored with a lifetime achievement award by the National Low Income Housing Coalition, which was a huge honor for her and for the public housing associations, the residents and a real just national honor for the work that they've been doing with our public housing redevelopment sites.

As was mentioned earlier, the Red Carpet Inn project has taken some big steps forward and beginning this month hopefully they may be able to be housing

some homeless residents more permanently there as they begin the multi-phase project to redevelopment to permanent supportive housing units.

And finally, we're continuing to move forward with our comprehensive plan update draft land use map, which will in the coming months be followed by a zoning rewrite, which will be citywide, which is big.

And I'm sure we'll bring out a lot of people with a lot of different perspectives around zoning changes, but

Over the next six months to a year, that zoning rewrite is really going to be huge for the city and is long, long overdue to not only increase density, but really just update a lot of things which are years outdated in our zoning code, which will be good not only for affordable housing development, but I think

Just providing more regularity and clarity for development across the board in Charlottesville, but certainly something to watch over the coming months.

Thank you.

So the commission is involved in a conversation, Michael, with the UVA.

I, as the chair, sit on the community engagement team.

Some of the folks sitting in the commission are also part of it.

They're doing a little bit of slow roll on information.

I had an actual meeting just before this one.

And what I'll do if it's okay with all and you, Mr. Chairman, then some future roundtables, I'll kind of give a little bit more information as it comes my way.

But we do have a seat at the table as a regional housing partnership.

So thank you for bringing that up, Michael.

I missed that in my presentation.

Thank you, sir.

So Jesse can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the board allocated $50,000 to securing a consultant for our comprehensive plan update.

So we'll be able to pick up where we left off on that last year and hit the ground running, hopefully.

And in the meantime, we've been able to do some minor ordinance updates.

We also have a very outdated zoning ordinance.

One good example recently we took to the board in ordinance to remove the language regarding maximum floor space for dancing and restaurants.

So we were able to get that taken out.

We've also been looking at revising some definitions for transient lodging options, campgrounds, how to address tiny homes, stuff like that.

We've also been looking at, I've been drafting ideas for mixed use district to support areas such as Livingston, you know, in consistency with the revitalization plan and hoping to, you know, overlay that on some of the older areas like, you know, the town in Schuyler and Shipman and some of these areas where uses are pretty restricted, but

They could become, you know, mixed use village hubs allowing expansive uses.

So we're looking forward to developing that, bringing that forward, working with the consultants on that too.

So that's all of that.

Thank you.

Jesse?

Yes.

Thank you so much, Dylan.

Yes, we did give you a bunch of money to do that.

There's probably only half of what you need.

So you're probably going to be asking for some more soon.

And also we have no minimum square footage, I guess, for dancing.

So that's good news for everybody who comes to Nelson County to our bars.

So beyond that, wanted to touch base on obviously our internet build out.

The community of Schuyler is getting that prioritized over the next six months.

So Schuyler specific will be getting fiber internet.

It also is getting a new cell tower, right Dylan?

Yeah, it's even better.

You're welcome, Donna.

And beyond that, we're kind of loving some revitalization and trying to get back into grassroots of our communities.

You know, COVID has really hampered connection and where we're at and how to move forward.

You know, something we've all been feeling.

Donna, before I forget, I need to talk to you and Liz about something again.

We're going to be working in Schuyler soon on some projects, but

We're talking about fire stuff.

We're also getting very close to getting 100% coverage in Albemarle County for broadband.

We had a great meeting this week.

That's right.

We're just leading the pack guys.

That's what we do.

But I'm going to call you and Liz probably either tomorrow or next week to talk about what I mean to EMS stuff, not EMS, fire.

Beyond that, you know, I think this is something to be emphasized is the lack of volunteerism in our volunteer fire departments.

We're all really starting to struggle.

We talk about the lack of labor force in construction.

We're starting to see that impact us and many other organizations that are critical to our communities.

So it's all something that we need to be thinking about and how we can bring that generation back.

Because as we all know, not every county and jurisdiction can afford paid firefighters.

And there's a piece of community that comes with volunteer fire departments that we need to preserve.

So I think that's something I'm going to be talking about more as we go into the summer.

Beyond that, that's all I have, Mr.

Chair.

Thank you, sir.

I would just say that Greene is also going through their comp plan update and they're also doing a zoning audit and trying to come up with some more flexible zoning.

They have a follow-on group to the Ruckersville small area plan of the advisory committee and that is looking at mixed use village, how it applies to Ruckersville.

Thank you.

A couple of things for Greene County.

We also approved our 2021 tax rates.

We'll vote on the budget next Tuesday night.

Greene County is closer than a month ago as far as getting out of Rapidan Service Authority, which means that it will either form our own water authority or enter into a public-private partnership.

So the other counties, Orange and Madison,

did approve a resolution for dissolution and Orange has agreed to help Madison County with their order.

And Madison County had like 159 users, but they had equal votes and it was kind of holding the process up a little bit.

So we're still not out yet, but we are closer than a month ago.

We also had a meeting and the board did approve the phase one

with the Central Jail Electric Cooperative and Repahannock Electric Cooperative concerning broadband.

A study will be completed in Greene County, and they'll come back to us with a phase two to look at any needed funding to help expand broadband in Greene County.

And that is one reason why I waited to reach out because we knew with them, I want to get information from them before we reached out to Albemarle County.

So we are looking at several providers to expand broadband.

That is one

possibility.

So things are looking better for us.

And of course, as each of you expand broadband all around Greene County, we appreciate that because it helps us because we're bordering counties.

We have a smart scale project that may be in jeopardy.

VDOT was under budget in the proposal and we have smart scale project that was approved as a cut through road.

That cut through road

Mayswell of development of commercial property because that was a original profit from the commercial developer years ago and it made a delay.

It won't delay it.

We actually had a another developer that was supposed to wait a certain period of time to develop a property and that road was contingent on the development and they had to go ahead to develop early.

So that could create some issues for us going forward.

We're crossing that as we get to it.

We also are working with the fire and EMS on the liaison to emergency service board, also the chair of the board for Greene County.

And we have a lot of obstacles to overcome.

We're trying to get our three fire departments to work together as a unit.

We're making progress there.

We did a fire management study a while back, and we're going through the state ordinance, the state codes as far as the number of volunteers and what that means.

And for those who don't know, the state code says 20 effective members in a volunteer organization.

and a reporter who did receive clarification, and I've got to verify this, I had reached out to our county attorney and no one gets him verified, but I think we finally received verification, 20 effective members means 20 active firefighters in a volunteer agency.

If you don't have that, you have as accountability to dissolve the volunteer agency, which no one wants to do.

Doesn't mean you have to do that, but you have that in your options.

So we're going through quite a bit of growing pains there, trying to keep our volunteers as volunteers, trying to find ways to improve the number of volunteers or increase the number of volunteers to find ways to make their lives a little bit easier.

We are going to have our meeting on Tuesday night in person, and we're also working to have it virtual so that those who want to attend virtually

You can attend a meeting virtually or if you want to attend in person, they can attend in person.

As most of you know, with the current pandemic and the situation, it's changed the nature of a lot of things.

Education, a lot of that will be virtual going forward.

Meetings, I don't know if we'll get away from the option of doing both.

I think you may have seen the news, some localities went straight from one to the other, and they've had some complaints being filed because some people still do not feel comfortable going to a session.

And that is all I have for Greene County.

Do we have any other comments from any other commissioner before we move on?

OK.

The next meeting will be June the 3rd, 2021.

And notice that item's next meeting is the election of the TJPDC officers.

We do have a public hearing next month, IGR, and approval of pre-application and a resolution for a housing preservation grant.

We have an update on the watershed improvement plan, the state master agreement, the DRPT funding, and the interim executive director review.

And these items we currently have for next month.

So that can change, obviously.

The next month meeting is June the 3rd, and of course, the meeting in July.

And just want to say thank you everyone again for your attendance, participation.

And I always make the statement that it'd be nice to see everybody face-to-face.

The way the governors announced it came through today, it'll probably be in August.

And the way it looks, I'll be the chair at the next meeting.

So I count tonight, before we begin, I thank you all for two-year time frame.

I've had six face-to-face meetings with everybody.

And it was funny, I met Mr. Welter before the meeting, and we realized we hadn't seen each other face-to-face for over a year.

We talked, we communicated, it's all been virtual.

It's been a strange time, but I appreciate your patience and I appreciate your understanding as you go through this process.

With that stated, do we have any other comments or questions or concerns?

And if not, can we have a motion to adjourn?

and Sandy, this is your last roll call vote tonight.

And so far, I'll be honest with you, every time I've done an adjournment in any meeting, no one has voted nay.

This is not a time to start nay voting.

Mr. Stolzenberg's not here.

Mr. Galloway.

Yes.

Ms. Price.

Aye.

Mr. Bryan.

Ms. Wilkinson.

I'm ready to go.

Mr. Babyok.

Mr. Barlow.

Yes.

Ms. Bishop.

Aye.

Really?

You're welcome.

Guys, I appreciate everything that you have done.

Be safe out there.

Days are getting better.

And a lot of that's due to what you're doing as officials and represented as your local governments.

So on behalf of a lot of people who have seen and love transition to trials over the past few months, especially in my job and dealing with what I deal with, thank you.

Thank you constituents.

and continue doing what you're doing.

Yes, have a great evening.