Planning District Commission Meeting   6/3/2021

It's now 705.

I'd like to call to order the Thomas Justin Plantis Commission meeting for June the 3rd, 2021.

I would be happy to.

This meeting of the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission is being held pursuant to item 4.0-01 of the Virginia State Budget Chapter 552 that allows public bodies to hold electronic meetings on the current COVID-19 emergency and 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 that the meeting was held by electronic communication means and the type of electronic communication means by which the meeting was held.

Thank you.

At this time, we have matters from the public.

Christine, I'm going to turn this over to you.

No, that's okay.

Is there anyone in the public that wishes to speak?

You can either raise your hand or unmute yourself.

All right.

I would love to.

I would like to welcome Karen Davis.

We invited her here tonight so that you all can be introduced to her.

If you have not had an opportunity to work with her directly,

I asked her to come and just speak to you guys briefly about Jaunt and then get some feedback from you all on what you would like to see if she were to come join us in a future meeting and do more of a formal presentation.

So Karen, welcome.

Thanks for joining us.

Thank you so much, Christine.

I appreciate the invitation to join this meeting and I welcome the opportunity to get to know everyone better.

I'm here just to really listen and ask questions.

I'd love to come back and really provide a comprehensive overview of who John is and what we do and really get into how we are

A regional transportation partner.

We connect regions and in a way that fixed route does not do.

I love to discuss the different models that we have available to connect those communities.

And my team is amazing.

We can get down, we can talk about ridership.

We can talk about models.

We can talk about where community members are traveling from and to and do heat maps for you.

Yeah, I think we would all be interested in each county, you know, how things are, how many riders, where you're at.

Great.

I'd like to ask also about Greene County, which recently became responsible for and possible connections for commuters to participate and maybe pick up a stop further down 29, somewhere, a transfer stop.

We do have some workforce housing

right near our food line that's relatively new, a couple of apartment units.

There's also some trailer parks in that area.

We've been walking just into the food line.

So anyway, this is a long question, but the Ruckersville Advisory Committee is trying to now help with the update of the comprehensive plan.

And the chair of that committee, which is the Citizens Committee, was asking all these questions that I just posed to you.

So we'd love to hear more about it.

I don't know if there's any memo that already discusses it, in which case I'd love to have a copy of the email to you later on, further reading, whatever.

Wonderful.

I would actually, you know, if, if there's an opportunity for myself and my staff to participate in the comp, um, develops, uh, plan development discussions, we would love to do that.

Well, if you would be wanting to or willing to address that little group I was just talking about, the Charlottesville Advisory Committee, I can bring it up to them that you might be willing to come talk to them.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Ms. Davis, I may be inaccurate in what I'm getting ready to state.

So it's just something that's been told to me.

I don't know the accuracy of it.

But I represent the Scottsville District in Albemarle County, which is the southern and eastern part.

And one of the comments that had previously been made to me, and it has been a little while, and I do recognize the complexities that the pandemic has imposed on all of us, clearly on John as well, but one of the comments that was made was that John appeared to do sort of a hub and spoke transportation from Scottsville to Charlottesville.

maybe from Esmont or Yancy to Charlottesville, but not as much connections between Scottsville and Yancy, for example.

And that in particular, that comment in particular was made to me with regard to Java and the centers that they previously had.

And I understand they're changing that and getting ready to meet with Marta Kean about that.

But one of the comments that was made was it was difficult for people from either the Anse area or the Scottsville area to go back and forth between those two.

whereas it was easier for them to get from either into Charlottesville.

And I do recognize the economies that are implicit in an on-demand system such as yours.

Yes, no, and thank you.

You're not the first person to raise that question about that particular area in service.

So I will definitely come back and address that for you in depth, because it's actually on my to-do list, priority list right now with the customer concern.

And so thank you for raising that.

Thank you, Ms.

Are there any other questions or comments that you all have for Ms. Davis?

Well, Karen, thank you for joining us tonight.

We would love to welcome you to join the rest of the meeting.

Thank you very much.

Moving on to presentations.

We have a US Department of Transportation raised grant.

Great, thank you so much.

I'm just going to share my screen here.

Great, I'm assuming everyone can see my screen.

Thank you again for the opportunity to present today.

Your packet included a resolution to support a RAISE planning grant application for a multimodal transportation station at the current Charlottesville Amtrak site in downtown Charlottesville.

Before I get into the details of that grant application, I wanted to give a little background on the RAISE grant program itself.

So RAISE is an acronym

that stands for Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity.

It was formerly known as the BUILD program under the Trump administration.

And before that, the TIGER program under the Obama administration.

It's a really large discretionary grant program run by the federal government.

The purpose of the program is to make capital investments in surface transportation that will have a significant local or regional impact.

There's a billion dollars available for the RAISE program, and about 30 million of that, or no more than 30 million of that, will be for planning grants.

And that's the kind of grant that we're applying for.

So a planning grant means that you're just doing all the planning for a RAISE eligible project, but you're not doing any of the construction work with the money that you request.

The application is coming up soon.

It will be due mid-July, July 12th at 5 p.m.

A few more specifics about the RAISE grant program.

So for planning grants, which again is the one that we're applying for, there's no minimum award.

We can request anything over a dollar.

We're looking at about $800,000 for this grant request.

50% of that billion dollars, 50% of project funds must be awarded to rural areas.

And the Charlottesville area qualifies as a rural area because we have a population of less than 200,000.

There is no match needed for rural areas so this planning grant would be fully supported by federal funds.

And just for your information, this is a reimbursement grant so we would spend money first and then be reimbursed.

So now onto the details of our specific application.

So we applied for BUILD the last time it was available.

We requested $711,000 to create a Charlottesville Regional Multimodal Transportation Station Master Plan to meet the capacity, accessibility, and safety demands of Charlottesville Union Station.

This is a picture of the Charlottesville Union Station site.

So right here in the middle of the screen is the station building.

Only half of it is leased by Amtrak.

The other half used to be a restaurant, which is no longer in operation.

There's a large parking lot.

This is Main Street.

This is heading to the west towards UVA and heading towards the east to downtown Charlottesville.

There are two platforms that serve the station.

One is over here and one is on the other side over here.

Okay, so in our previous application, which was for BUILD, we requested all that money to do a three-phase master plan project.

So the first phase was really heavily on public engagement.

We wanted to develop, use that public engagement to develop a shared community vision for the station site.

And from that shared community vision, we would have consultants develop a bunch of very high level design concepts for what to do at that station site.

And from there, based on additional public engagement, they would narrow down those high level design concepts into three priority design concepts.

From there, we would move into phase two, where the consultants would do feasibility studies for those three priority design concepts that had been identified by the community.

In their feasibility studies, they would measure how well each design concept addressed the capacity, accessibility, and safety challenges identified.

It would also measure, give measures of community and regional impact.

And that's important so that we would have that information in order to have a competitive future grant application for construction funding.

And lastly, the consultants in phase two would settle on a community preferred design concept with the help of public engagement.

Lastly, the third phase would be taking that community preferred design concept and developing an implementation plan so that it could be built in the future.

So part of that grant application required us to demonstrate a need.

Why did we need the money to create this kind of a master plan?

And we gave three big reasons, capacity, safety, and accessibility.

So the capacity issue is that the station doesn't have the infrastructure or the amenities to adequately serve existing ridership, let alone the increased ridership projected for 2045.

You guys may have heard many rail announcements recently.

There's a lot of rail expansion going on in the Commonwealth.

Specifically to our station, there are plans to add a second daily round trip train between Lynchburg and DC, which would stop at Charlottesville Union Station.

Amtrak projects a 137% increase in ridership for that additional train.

Additional Virginia Breeze route is going to be added between Danville and DC, stopping at the Amtrak station.

And that will add hundreds of boardings and lightings at our station every year.

And Megabus is projecting ridership of at least 325,000 per year coming through our station.

The safety concern was that it was missing, the station was missing a lot of important things such as lighting, canopies to protect people from the weather, appropriate and useful signage among a few other things.

There was also a lot of pooling of water on the walkways and the platforms.

And lastly, accessibility.

There were limited ADA compliant routes into the station.

So this is just a little bit more detail on this demonstration of need.

So Amtrak, based on the number of riders that the station serves, has space requirements for each of its amenities or different services.

And this is a chart that shows really clearly everything in orange is a service or space that Amtrak has a suggested

suggested square footage.

And the current station doesn't meet that suggestion.

And that's just for the current ridership.

It doesn't even look at projected ridership.

And here is a picture of the station.

This is platform two, the southern platform.

It was one that had uneven surface.

So that accounted for a lot of the pooling water.

And it doesn't have any lighting or a canopy to protect people from the weather.

One of the only ADA acceptable routes into the train station requires that people who park in the parking lot use this platform to access the station from the back rather than entering at the front.

So that's not a great way to get people in.

Okay, so the previous grant application built on a lot of work that had already been done.

So the Department of Rail and Public Transit did an internal review.

And in that review, they identified over $740,000 in needed repairs and additions in order to meet ADA requirements.

And they identified over $3 million in repairs and additions to the platforms and canopies and other amenities.

Additionally, DRPT invested $100,000 and the City of Charlottesville contributed $50,000 towards a preliminary station study that is still ongoing.

We got pieces of that in order to develop this fiscal year 20 build application.

It provided a ton of very useful background that made our build application as successful as it was.

That particular station study investigated feasibility of some options for that site that would address those demonstrated needs and further develop the area.

But those feasibility options hinged on city ownership of the property.

So in conversations with DRPT, the Department of Rail and Public Transit, there still seems to be a need for further investigation of the site.

in order to meet those accessibility safety and capacity needs.

And also to think outside of the box of the city owning this particular property, because right now the property is owned by a private property owner and he leases the site to Amtrak.

So I said that our application from fiscal year 20 was somewhat successful.

Ray, our build is incredibly competitive and we were not granted the funding we requested, but we did have a follow-up meeting with staff at the USDOT and they were really pleased with our application and they strongly encouraged us to reapply saying that we could really just submit what we had done before.

They were very happy with it and they would love to see it again.

So we would like to reapply for a planning grant to complete the master plan that we talked about, the Charlottesville Regional Multimodal Transportation Station Master Plan, and that would again be to really meet those capacity, accessibility, and safety demands.

We intend to use the same three-phase scope with public engagement leading to broad options for the site, feasibility studies of the preferred options in the second phase, and finally in the third phase, an implementation plan.

We would make minor tweaks to the schedule and costs, but we would not exceed two years or $800,000.

There are still a few remaining tasks.

We would need to revise the application a little bit and we will still need letters of support.

Perhaps the most important being a letter of support from the property owner to ensure that he is happy with the idea of moving forward and looking at additional options for the site.

Thank you.

Yes, Donna.

Thank you.

Thank you for your presentation.

Sorry, I need to turn off that air conditioner.

Two questions.

One, the letters of support.

You mentioned the property owner.

Yes.

So with our previous application, we did have several letters of support, including from the City of Charlottesville, from CAT, from Friends of Amtrak, and from DRPT and Amtrak itself.

Thank you.

The other comment that I have is while the parking lot appears to be pretty adequate right now with the increase in the number of trains coming through, I wonder whether it will be sufficient.

I have taken the train from Charlottesville on many occasions and there is no other nearby available parking other than that lot.

So I'm not sure exactly where that would go in your plan and everything but you know there really is there's no other place nearby where you can park that's lots full so I would suggest that just be part of your consideration.

I would agree with you, Donna.

I've had you trained several times as well.

I've seen situations where the parking lot's almost maxed out, especially on different days of the week.

Any other questions for Jessica or comments?

And Jessica, you were reaching out to a little bit of words as well.

All right.

Thank you.

All right, next item we have is interim executive director of 100-day plan update.

All right, great.

Amazingly, we are already at the 100-day mark.

It went a lot faster than we all anticipated with so much going on here at the PDC.

I specifically

Appreciate a lot of the commissioners who have urged us not to try to do too much too fast that a transition by itself is challenging let alone with all the opportunities that are before us and so we've been really grateful for the support from you all through this last hundred days and now moving into the next hundred days I wanted to update you all on the presentation that I gave you at the beginning of the hundred day plan of some

goals and tasks that we wanted to accomplish in the 100 days.

And then also looking ahead to what the next 100 days for the PDC will need to accomplish.

So I will pull up my screen if you will give me one second.

Loading.

Great.

Sorry, I just had to reload.

Adobe apparently had a moment.

All right, can you all see my screen okay?

Great, thank you.

All right, for the 100-day plan, as you all might recall, there were about five overarching goals, one of them related to the regional community and integrating better into that regional community and expanding my own professional network as the interim director.

The second goal was related to assessing the areas of opportunity.

We knew at the beginning of that 100, 120 days that there was a lot to be accomplished in the next 120 days, so we wanted to be very strategic about the opportunities before us.

The third goal was agency operations, making sure that we were able to maintain and improve our operations through the transition.

Fourth goal was related to professional growth, about identifying and taking advantage of opportunities for personal but also staff professional growth.

And then the final overarching goal was related to doing an agency review, making sure we're comprehensively looking at all of our guiding documents and programs with new leadership to make sure that we are

meeting the expectations of all of the guiding documents.

So related to the first regional community goal, a couple of the things that have been accomplished in the last 100 days, serving on and participating in a lot of local regional board committee meetings.

I listed a couple examples for you all to see.

Also, meeting one-on-one with multiple community leaders and key stakeholders.

The last 100 days has been a whirlwind for everyone.

Zoom meetings, one-on-one, small group, to get to know some of the leaders better and for them to get to know me.

We entered into an agreement with UVA for regular graduate interns for the PVC for every summer.

We've started doing on-site tours with our key partners that started with Jaunt

We would like to move on to CAT and University Transit and a lot of our other partners and making sure that we are building relationships and that we are learning about their operations by writing their transit services and speaking to their staff.

So we've started that.

And then attending you all's local supervisor and council meetings and planning commission meetings to better in tune to what is going on in the region and to pay attention to each locality's priorities as they come across

your meetings.

Related to areas of opportunity for the TJPDC, I'm not going to read all these to you, but we've certainly been continuing to

proceed on broadband, regional broadband, regional cigarette tax, regional transit partnership, regional housing partnership.

So we're continuing all of those areas of opportunity and really watching a lot of them go into the next developmental phase.

The regional housing partnership and the transit partnership are fairly new and are now looking at some strategic planning needs of what they will do to move forward.

So that is in the works.

We've pursued a lot of new grant opportunities.

A lot of new grant opportunities.

Staff is laughing across the table from me because of the number of applications that we've had each other review.

Anything from RAISE to Virginia Addiction Reduction Program, which I'll talk to you about later.

A new Virginia Housing PDC grant opportunity, which we're very excited about.

So it's been a very exciting and very busy couple of months for setting up pipeline projects for us into the future.

And then adding funding opportunity discussion to all our regular leadership and staff meetings.

It's something we talk about every week actually is an agenda item to make sure that everybody is in tune to the things that we're pursuing as a team.

As far as agency operations, I'll let you all read through that list.

Certainly this could have been pages, but the major things were related to the FY21 and 22 budgets.

They were related to staff and leadership team meetings that we instituted.

Attending staff program and project meetings.

I certainly

My husband has a lot of jokes at home about I do my work at night and I work with my staff during the day and so I think I can only commend this team and I'll say that at the end for the amount of pushing up the sleeves and everybody jumping in together to accomplish what we have in a hundred days and then looking ahead to FY22 and FY23 we'll be doing a draft budget for FY23 already when we return in August so it has been

As I'm sure it is for all of you all this time of year.

For professional growth, we started regular staff meetings.

I met with staff one-on-one at the beginning of the process to make sure that they all were able to openly communicate with me about what the agency's leadership direction should be from their perspective.

Certainly meeting regularly with the commission chair and the executive committee and with several of you all one-on-one as different issues came about.

I have been meeting regularly with a local mentor just to talk more about local government operations and then the trainings and educational opportunities.

One that I think was extremely beneficial to me as an interim leader

is CERTI, the Southeast Regional Directors Institute that was all regional body directors and the amount of collaboration and sharing of what they've all been through through the pandemic and how they've made changes in their bodies was really helpful for us to compare what we have done and what we plan to do moving forward.

And then training and webinars as many of you do, but we really got into making sure we attend as many as we can to learn the grant programs as thoroughly as we can.

So when opportunities come about, we already have a staff member that can speak to the specifics of the grants.

And then the comprehensive review.

This kind of happened as it needed to.

I certainly was ambitious in the beginning thinking I would bring home lots of documents and just read them casually.

I admit my naivety there.

It really was when is this body need to turn over its chair?

Let me go read it and figure it out.

And so there has been a review of all of those as we've needed to strategic plan bylaws, all of the committees and partnerships.

And so

We'll continue to do that certainly for the next 100 days and probably for the rest of the, there he is again, excuse me as I interrupt myself to let Mr. Babyok in again.

All right, and then also beginning to review a lot of our internal policies as things have been changing related to remote work and remote meeting participation.

So that's, we've been doing reviewing as needed.

So for the next 100 days, you know, as you guys can see, and many of you have seen throughout the last few weeks,

It has been a hamster wheel around here.

Everybody has been really busy and I'm so thoroughly impressed with this team.

Not once have I had somebody say, it's my five o'clock, I gotta go.

We're really good about balance, but we're also really good about everybody's gotta jump in when they need to.

So I actually think this transition has been strengthening our team at the PDC because we have to work together to get the things done for the gaps that we have in leadership right now.

Next 100 days for the PDC.

I'll go through this a little bit quicker because I think this is more the direction that we're going to continue to go.

So days, if we're looking at regional community, that's identifying more community leaders, making sure I'm getting in front of state agency contacts so that they know my name and so that I can reach out to them directly and continuing to attend meetings.

O'Brien, and what's going on in the planning bodies.

Identifying regional networking opportunities.

We're pretty excited that a lot of these networking and then the getting to know without a screen between As far as assessing areas of opportunity in the next few days, I do hope it is not as voracious as the last 100 days but we still have a lot of

the month of June and July and August.

And so we're going to continue to pursue those funding opportunities and have received some great candidates and tend to move forward with that.

This month, we're going to continue engaging with VA PDC.

David will get a little, actually I have it in my executive director's report, but I'll probably put them on the spot to give more detail.

and then continuing to attend any relevant state agency meetings.

That's another thing that staff has been impressive with is saying, I'll go to this, you go to that, I'll take this.

And so we've really spread out that responsibility.

Agency operations in the next hundred days, we have to do year-end financial spread by 21, same as you all.

Setting up the FY22 financial tracking and invoicing, drafting the FY23 budget,

Utilizing a new online onboarding platform.

We're pretty excited to move our onboarding for new staff to a virtual platform.

So we're going to test it out with this first new hire.

If we don't test it out with interns first, we can make more mistakes there.

Preparing for the August meeting, supporting the agency's direction and the commission's direction on the executive director position as it's appropriate for me to be involved and support whatever I can.

And then

One thing that we've talked a lot about internally is developing a master list of all of our boards, partnerships, committees, and making sure we know all members, terms, dates, so that we have one place to look to say what needs to occur this month.

And we can look across all of our bodies to make sure that we're doing those things on time and not having to catch up if we realize it hasn't happened when it should have.

And then for professional growth, I want to turn this one really into the professional growth of us as a body and individuals of staff.

So this one would be less about my own professional development.

My staff doesn't know this yet, or at least all of them don't, but I want to introduce the first staff professional development book club, David.

I want to continue to get feedback from staff and the commission chair on what we need moving forward.

certainly want all staff to continue taking advantage of all of the training and conferences that are available to us related to our program areas and then in the next you know quarter I'd love staff to begin thinking about what are their long-term professional development goals and what can we support at the PDC to make sure that they're meeting those long-term professional goals and then finally looking for more Title VI training opportunities I think that's an area where we can

We need to continue to develop.

And finally, the comprehensive review.

As I said before, we will do this as needed as things come about.

But another thing that we've been talking a lot about is developing work plans for some of our programs that don't naturally have one.

So like a UPWP, but making sure that we know what is our housing programs goals.

so that each of the projects and individual projects meet those program goals.

So that's something we'll be working on.

And then with all of that said, I'm happy to take any questions or comments from any of you all and also would love feedback if there are things for the next 100 days that we have not thought of that you think should be a part of this.

Are there any questions for Christine?

Thank you.

Christine, thank you very much for that presentation.

I think that was very helpful.

It really put a lot of things in a good framework and context and everything.

And I'm going to have a couple of comments and ask some questions.

And I'm going to come from the context of Albemarle County over the last year and a half, particularly dealing with the pandemic.

And then as I

reference that you'll then see where my questions are coming to the TJPDC because I just don't know.

For example, I don't know how many staff we have.

So that type of information would be helpful.

So let me, again, let me kind of reference it back to Albemarle County.

During the pandemic, we, in the Navy, we would have called it gapped billets.

We had about 18 positions that when they became vacant over the course of the pandemic, we did not fill them.

We reduced our budget dramatically.

There was no pay raise last year.

This year, we did give all county employees a $1,000 one-time payment.

I hesitate to call that a bonus, given the constraints of the reduction.

We were unable to go to our $15 minimum wage last year, as we had planned on doing.

We did not give anyone a pay raise last year.

This year,

We did give the $1,000 one-time payment.

We have approved a 2% pay rate across the board, but just even last night at our board meeting, our county executive announced that we're going to look to give an additional 3% to our public safety employees, fire, rescue, police,

Because what we found is that our pay in that area in particular had fallen substantially behind our competitive market.

And so we were really struggling.

We were training people and as soon as they got their certification, they were leaving for another county or city law enforcement or fire department because they were paying more than we were.

So again, I don't know

the status of TJPDC with your personnel.

I don't know how many positions, again, in the Navy we call it billets.

I don't know how many bodies you have to fill those billets.

I don't know if you have had losses because of economic condition or I don't know how the pay scale at TJPDC compares in your competitive market.

But those are things that I would like to know in order to ensure that we on the board are giving you on the staff what you need to be able to recruit and retain

The people that you believe you need and the positions that you need so that you're able to meet your goal three of agency operations.

So if I look at the schedule that you put out for the next hundred days, it appears that perhaps maybe by weeks 11 to 14, this could be an item that I'm asking, I'm not telling.

that you might be able to provide because I do want to make sure that we are giving you the resources you need to have the personnel you need in order to achieve the mission that needs to be accomplished.

So some comment with a question to be answered.

And if there are other things that I'm just not wise enough to have thought about to put in there, I appreciate you covering that as well.

Thank you, Commissioner Price.

I really appreciate that.

We are a

Small and mighty staff.

We're pretty lean right now as well.

We are 10.5 FTEs, so we're 10 and a half with Don Reed being the half-time person with a COO position vacant and a planner position vacant.

We are definitely a little behind where I would like us to be when we look at our staff utilization and the hours

We have majority of staff are booked over 100%, which we all know is not possible.

And so moving into FY22, filling that planner position, making sure that we are timely in filling the ED role permanently so that we can have the COO position also filled, I think will be very helpful to us as an agency.

I can say we did for next year, 3% pay raises.

I would, I mean,

would love for us to consider as we get six months into the year and we look at which grants we've been awarded and what our staff utilization is considering additional raises at that time.

Our staff is the same as yours and Albemarle.

They did not get raises in FY20 and several people received raises at the very early end of FY19.

So for some people it's been two years since they have had a pay raise.

So that is something we very much want to be looking at into this next fiscal year.

And then as far as comparison to our competitors for pay, the VA PDC recently did a salary survey.

So what we can do as a leadership team is bring the results from that survey to our team and look at each level that we have and make sure that we are competitive

with other regional bodies and frankly with your local planning bodies as well to make sure that we're competitive locally and within the region.

Well, thank you.

I appreciate those additional comments.

Clearly with the COO position being vacant right now, it means that you're working more than 100% of what should be expected.

And with another position also vacant, if you have 10.5 FTEs and two of them are not filled, then that's pretty substantial demands being placed upon the people who are there, which actually kind of reminds me of a

several periods in the Navy when the federal government was cutting resources so much that pretty soon we'd be asking no one to do everything because there weren't any people and there weren't any resources.

And so I think we have to be on our toes to make sure that we're allowing you to have the resources you need.

Are there any more questions for Christine?

Great job.

Yes.

Yeah, actually, quite a bit's been done.

And one thing I wanted to kind of tag on with Ms. Price was to be careful not to burn staff out, because the job markets go back up again, and we don't want to increase the shortage of staff that we currently have in place.

Because it's more difficult to hire than it is to retain.

That's right.

and please let us know if we can help in any way.

We appreciate it.

All right, moving on.

He's always calling in versus going through the computer.

Okay, yeah.

That sounds great.

The first item on the agenda is the amendment to the May 6, 2021 meeting.

OK, we have a proper motion and a second.

Good boy.

I'm sorry for those who are watching the meeting.

That's Bob's internet.

Lewis, Simon Bizoff,

Sandy, can you do a roll call vote?

Yeah, sounds good.

Mr. Babiak?

Yeah.

Miss Bishop?

Aye.

Mr. Rutherford?

Yes.

Mr.

We don't have a number he can dial into.

The phone number is available.

Will you do me a favor?

Would you call him and give him the passcode information?

If we ask a question, if we call him, can we just leave him on the speaker and put him on the phone?

Because he's being recorded, so we don't need to have him join the meeting.

Bob, if you can hear us, I'm calling you now on your cell phone.

Hey, Mr. Babyok, can you hear us?

Yes, I can.

Thank you very much.

Mr. Babyok, on the vote of the minutes, did you vote aye or nay?

All right, sir, appreciate that.

Mr. O'Brien is connecting.

Should we wait?

Mr. O'Brien, are you there, sir?

I am here.

I'm sorry to join so late.

No problem.

On the minutes,

of the meeting of May 6th, sir.

Do you wish to discuss that?

Do you wish to vote aye or nay, sir?

Aye.

Thank you.

All right, the minutes have passed.

Yep, very good.

For the month of April, I'm going to view an abbreviated version since you're provided with all of the details in the packet.

And so we have 8.13 months of available operating expenses.

Our goal is five, so we're well above our goal, allowing our capital reserve account to grow to $324,000.

Unrestricted cash on hand, we have 2.7 months.

Anything under two months is an alarm for us, so we're watching that carefully.

We had a very strong financial month of April.

We had another net gain.

this time of $28,784 for the month of April.

And then we've had a fiscal year to date net gain of $122,000.

So we've had a very strong financial year to date.

As far as profit and loss, we're about 83% through the year and we're right on target.

83.5% of our budgeted income has come in and 87%

of our budget expenses have gone out.

So we're in really good shape for that.

As far as our accrued revenues, we have 439,000 in operating funds available in grants and contracts.

We have 158,000 per month and our operating expense or our expenses last month were 89,000.

So we have more than we would need each month in order to meet all of those expenses.

However, we do anticipate some of those rolling into FY22.

So while we have 158, we do think some of our programs we can push into FY22 to shore up that budget.

And then, yeah, with that, I'll take questions if you have any.

Thank you.

That's great.

I think this is a good direction.

Obviously, we know that's a reflection of pay.

Yes, and a lot of our updates that occur every four or five years are all coming now.

Do we have a second?

Second.

Second.

Thank you.

Mr. Payne?

Mr. Stolzenberg?

Mr. Gallaway?

Mr. Price?

Aye.

Sorry, there was static.

No, I heard it too.

Mr. O'Brien?

Aye.

Mr. Smith?

Ms. Wilkinson?

Aye.

Mr. Babiak?

Please say aye.

Mr. Barlow?

Yes.

Ms. Bishop?

Aye.

And Mr.

Aye.

And the Multi-Flash reports pass.

The next time we're in there, we have several resolutions.

As we go through this, I will say that it comes in practice

Probably the last time we'll have a virtual meeting with the commissioners if things continue to go as they're going.

So next time we'll probably be face to face.

So as I say that, it'll be nice to have my last meeting as a chair.

That's the way it works out.

With that stated, we have before us a resolution of the election of officers for fiscal year 2022.

And on that, we have Mr. Jesse Rutherford, for Nelson County as chair, Dale Herring, Greene County as vice chair, David Stolzenberg, Savannah County as treasurer,

and Christine Jacobs as the secretary.

Are there any discussion, additions or subtractions before we take a motion?

And hearing none, can I have a motion to approve the resolution?

The election of officers for fiscal year 2022 is presented.

Thank you.

We have a motion and a second.

Mr. Payne, Mr. Stolzenberg, Mr. Galloway, Ms. Price?

Aye.

Mr. O'Brien?

Aye.

Mr. Babich?

Aye.

Mr. Barlow?

Yes.

Ms. Bishop?

Aye.

Mr. Rutherford?

Aye.

And Mr.

Aye.

Congratulations to all of you.

Congratulations to you, sir.

Moving on to the next resolution is the resident elect Go Virginia Region 9 council representatives.

Okay.

The TJPDC commission is the appointing body for the Region 10 of Go Virginia.

Board currently represented on the Go Virginia board is Mr. Christian Goodwin as the executive over in Louisa and Mr. Tony O'Brien as the elected official in Fluvanna County.

Each of their terms, their first terms are expiring at the end of June of this year, and they're both eligible and interested and willing to be reappointed for a second term.

Additionally, the Planning District Commission is also responsible for appointing the ex officio, which has always historically been the current sitting ED.

So with that, staff would recommend a motion to appoint Fluvanna County Board of Supervisor member Tony O'Brien and Louisa County Administrator Christian Goodwin.

So moved.

Mr. Payne, Mr. Stolzenberg, Mr. Galloway, Ms. Price.

Aye.

Mr. O'Brien.

I'll abstain.

OK.

Mr. Babiak?

Aye.

That was an aye through the phone.

Thank you.

Mr. Barlow?

Yes.

Ms. Bishop?

Aye.

And Mr.

Aye.

Thank you.

The resolution passes.

For this one, the Department of Housing and Community Development, DHCD, created the Virginia Eviction Reduction Pilot Program.

They were funded in FY21.

We did not apply at that time because the application window was too short following on the tails of the Emergency Rent and Mortgage Relief Program.

This year, FY22, they're offering a planning grant in order to help jurisdictions get closer to being able to apply for the full pilot funding.

It's a $50,000 planning grant.

The City of Charlottesville and the County of Albemarle, a consortium of folks interested in eviction reduction,

approach the PDC to see if we would be willing to serve as the applicant and as the financial administrator of that program.

So we did submit that application.

We are awaiting feedback from that.

This resolution is asking us is giving us authorization to issue an RFP.

As a part of that $50,000 planning grant, we would be seeking the services of a consultant to help us develop a community work plan, implementation strategies, all things related to reducing evictions in the city of Charlottesville and the county of Albemarle.

Any questions concerning this?

Hearing none, can I have a motion to approve as presented?

So moved.

We have a motion.

We have a second.

Sandy?

Mr. Payne, Mr. Stolzenberg, Mr. Galloway, Ms. Price?

Aye.

Mr. Babiak?

Aye.

Mr. Barlow?

Yes.

Ms. Bishop?

Aye.

And Mr.

Aye.

And the resolution passes.

Next item on the agenda is a resolution to support a rebuilding American infrastructure and sustainability and equity or to raise grant application

and Charles original multimodal transportation station master plan.

Yes, this is, this coincides with the presentation you all already received.

And so this is recommending to resubmit that application.

Okay.

Any questions or comments?

If I hear none, can we have a motion?

So moved.

Second.

Motion and a second.

Second.

Mr. Payne, Mr. Stolzenberg, Mr. Galloway, Ms. Price?

Aye.

Mr. Smith, Ms. Wilkinson?

Andrew, you're muted.

I'm sorry, I tried to unmute myself.

Thank you.

Mr. Babiak?

Mr. Barlow?

Yes.

Ms. Bishop?

Aye.

And Mr.

Aye.

The resolution passes.

Thank you very much.

The next item we have is from

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the commission.

Your comments earlier about this being the last meeting that we do totally remotely, that we're back together in the next couple of months.

This item then is something that would, if this policy is adopted, would allow individual commission members to participate in meetings of the commission

remotely under certain conditions, which I'll talk about.

This is actually something that was put in place in the Code of Virginia back in 2018 to allow this type of remote participation.

But in order to do so, the public body that would be agreeing to allow such participation by members would have to adopt a policy to really guide that participation and the approval of it.

And it's a policy that the commission

Heretofore has not adopted.

So you have before you a draft policy titled remote electronic participation, which lays out the circumstances under which an individual member could petition, for lack of a better word, to be able to participate in a particular meeting remotely by notifying the chair that he's unable to attend.

And then there are reasons listed in the policy that

Hall of State code, which they would be able to do so.

The commission then would have to approve that member's participation electronically, and that would have to be recorded in the minutes of the meeting.

We would have to ensure that the commission member could be heard, which we've been challenged by this evening, if they are participating remotely.

And then there are some limitations on the ability of an individual member to do this.

Right now the code says that you can do it two times a year.

New state law that takes effect July 1 will allow either two times per year or 25% of the meetings rounded up to the next whole number.

So if we have 10 regular meetings a year, 25% is 2.5.

So it would allow an individual member, if they are approved, to be able to attend remotely up to three times per year.

So that's the policy.

Are you looking for adoption tonight or adoption at the next meeting?

You know, I think you would have to have a situation where maybe in the far, far corner of Louisa County was where the meeting was held.

And in the far, far corner of Nelson County or Greene County, it was where somebody was living.

That was a provision that was put in a number of years ago, I think, to recognize as there was more prevalence of regional bodies.

And, you know, you think about, you know, for example, go Virginia, where you're really encompassing

to PDCs.

You could probably have a meeting of a Go Virginia Council where the meeting could be held at one end and a member from the other end.

David, what about a member who is traveling?

Yes, yes.

Got it.

And this, again, applies to the commissioners, but not to public itself.

We had a conversation earlier tonight as far as the TJPDC is still going to have a virtual format so that people can participate in public and participate virtually.

Correct.

Do we have any other questions for David?

And actually,

If we say that the member is unable to attend due to a personal matter, that appears to be a very broad language, which really just raises the question, why do we need to say anything more?

A temporary or permanent disability, well, that would be a personal matter.

A family member's medical condition requires the person to provide the care.

That would be a personal matter.

So it basically, it looks like what we are doing is authorizing a member

not more than twice a year or 25% rounded up to the next full number for a personal matter.

I just really question whether we need to put those specific examples since they appear to be a subset of the broader personal matter language.

I don't know if that's intended more to be EG for example, rather than IE that is.

Mr. Chairman, Ms. Price, thank you for that.

If you look at the last line of section A, and I believe it's also referenced somewhere else, that there must be some identification of the specificity of the nature of the personal matter.

Right.

I believe that's a similar language that has to be included in the minutes.

So I don't think that the intent of the change in the code that was made or that it includes this

was that everything be a personal matter and that these other things would not be mentioned.

I think they wanted to specifically say that it's medical reasons, it's disability is 60 miles.

And so this policy is trying to really track what the code of Virginia says right now and really stick to that.

I would be hesitant to say that we just include personal matters when you have code language that says you have to identify the nature

Well, I understand that part.

I mean, no matter, but it appears no matter what the reason is, you would have to say, you would have to say it's a personal matter, I'm on travel.

It's a person or a family member's medical condition.

Well, that's a, you know, that would have to be specified as well.

But if that's the language, if this language is copied from state code, then I mean, I'm not going to question that.

It just seems like it's, it's a broad personal matter.

I think you're right.

I think, you know, the local, local, you know, attorneys interpret it that way, that it really, when, you know, when

Point well taken.

And I understand why we would want the reason for the members

Absence from physical presence to be articulated because what we don't want is to have a public body that is basically expected to meet in person and have members who just, you know, I'm having dinner tonight and I don't want to be there.

So, you know, but anyway, I'm fine with it.

It was just a question.

Thank you.

David, a question for that, as from Ms. Price was saying, it says only before the day of the meeting that members should notify the chair.

So if I'm an individual, let's say that it's either traveling or for some reason in a male condition unable to attend, I will contact the chair and say that I cannot attend for the following reasons.

But during a meeting, the chair will just simply say that the following member has contacted me and stated that he or she cannot participate and would like to participate through electronic means.

We do not have to specify what that reasoning is during a public meeting, though, correct?

That's the question, I think.

Vice chair.

So should be the chair or vice chair?

That would be assumptive.

Yeah.

And then again, it does have to come.

The public bodies that we voted on as well.

So it would be no public meeting.

Yeah.

I think you're enough time.

Ms. Price, I think just looking at it, it might also speak to the fact that disability and medical conditions are on there, that there are other regulations that govern those too, you know, ADA, HIPAA, stuff like that.

Thank you.

It's not directly related to this, but we do have a limitation on how many meetings a commissioner can miss.

This is not missing.

It's not the same thing.

Correctly.

If the commissioner participates and votes, they are present.

Any more questions or comments?

If not, we've been asked to vote on this tonight.

So do I have a motion to approve the remote electronic participation in meetings policy as presented?

So moved.

We have a motion.

We have a second.

I second.

We have a second.

Mr. Payne?

Mr. Stolzenberg?

Mr. Galloway?

Ms. Price?

Aye.

Mr. Smith?

Yes, you voted aye.

Mr. Barlow?

Yes.

Miss Bishop?

Aye.

And Mr.

Aye.

That passes.

Thanks a lot.

I appreciate it.

You're welcome, miss.

All right, moving on.

Next item on the agenda is the

Great.

In the interest of time, I'll exercise brevity anywhere that I can in order to get through all of these.

But since we are not meeting in the month of July, I wanted to make sure to give a pretty comprehensive update of where we are on each of our programs and a lot of the new opportunities.

But then if there are questions about any of these opportunities, please feel free to reach out to me and I can give you additional information as needed.

So the first one I can actually revise is that we have submitted a $2 million grant application to Virginia Housing.

It is a new grant track that I've spoken to you guys about in the executive director's report previously and it's intended to support planning district commissions as intermediaries in order to

create new affordable units in the region.

And so this is a really great partnership and we're very excited with Virginia Housing.

They've worked very closely with the VAPDC to meet with the directors through David's work.

We've participated in focus groups for them to help them consider as they developed the program guidelines.

So this has been a really great partnership.

This grant would allow us to serve as the grant maker to accept RFPs or proposals for that funding, excuse me.

The first six to 12 months after receipt of the funds is intended for planning purposes, so you didn't have to have a specific plan going into the grant application that's intended to be part of the process.

The funds do have to be expended within three years with units being able to be inhabited within those three years.

So it is a very quick timeline for each million dollar awarded.

There's a requirement of at least 10 units.

So for our region, that would be a minimum of 20 units that we would need to develop through a partnership with either a private or nonprofit or government developer.

It is a non-competitive award.

A grant so that all planning district commissions, if they were to all apply for the max funding with strong applications, there's enough funding for all planning district commissions to receive that funding.

So I was going to wait until tomorrow, but we had so many things going on that we have already submitted this grant application.

And we are very excited to hear hopefully of an award by the end of June.

So this is a very quick turnaround.

The next thing is through HUD.

They have issued funds and a letter to the home consortium that an additional $2.4 million will go through the home consortium.

That is in addition to the annual funds that we already received.

That $2.4 million will need to be spent within eight years.

So we have until 2030 to program that funding.

Those funds won't be available until potentially late October, maybe even November.

A substantial annual action plan revision will need to occur and a great deal of planning in advance of that revision in order to identify what the projects are going to be that are going to be completed.

We will be working with the member governments in the consortium and with our housing

Providers to program out that funding.

Again, in the next three to four months, there'll be a pretty big lift in standing that up so that we can get those funds out into the community as quickly as possible.

Next thing on the list is Nelson County has contracted with us to prepare up to two TAP grants.

That's Transportation Alternative Program.

One of them is for sidewalk infrastructure.

in downtown Livingston, and the other one is a potential application for the Gladstone Train Depot relocation of the old building.

Those applications, the pre-application is due July 1, and then VDOT reviews the pre-applications on a rolling basis.

Final applications would then be due in October once we receive feedback on the pre-application.

The housing speaker series is ongoing.

We just had our third session on transportation and housing.

We had approximately 65 participants.

It was very well received.

We've gotten great feedback on merging those two topics.

The final session for this spring is on equity and housing and information on registering for that is on our website and it's free and open to the community.

And then we did a jaunt site visit.

As I told you guys previously, five staff members were picked up in a jaunt bus and we went over to their facility and we met staff and we talked operations and we learned a little bit more about the comprehensive nature of jaunt.

And then as I told you previously, we plan to continue doing that with several partners, beginning with our transit agencies and then expanding beyond that once we've completed those.

Next one is staff continues to work remotely.

Our target return to work date is July 6th, and we will be doing that in a rotating basis so that staff are coming in approximately two to three days a week and able to continue to work remotely two to three days a week.

We'll keep you updated on that, but we do fully intend to return on this date unless there is direction otherwise.

And then STAB, we've advertised the full-time planner position.

We hope to

Hire that candidate before the end of June in anticipation of grant awards coming in and lots of work to be completed to stand up all these new housing programs.

So we're particularly looking for someone that has interest and experience in housing and transportation for that position.

David, you can expand on any of the next three of these if I leave something out.

The Regional Broadband Partnership met on May 21st.

The members of that partnership heard from the state's broadband team on the guidance that was issued for the use of the ARP funding.

Excuse the typo in my report.

There's also an update from Gary Wood from SEVAC on the SEVAC Firefly, Dominion, and Rappahannock Electric Cooperative Partnership.

And then as far as regional cigarette tax, at this time we've had seven counties in our broader region endorsing resolutions and expressing interest in participating in the regional cigarette tax administration.

We're continuing to work on that in a small working group and we'll continue to keep you all updated as that moves forward.

And then final update that I have is the VAPDC is presenting a series of educational

programs this summer.

It's for virtual sessions.

They are very relevant topics that I'm excited to attend related to housing opportunities, election analysis, and broadband.

On the last item, as we continue to plan VA PDC for those additional sessions.

First session is next Tuesday.

There's another one the end of June.

We've got end of July and end of August.

But as we continue to put more meat on the bones for those latter two sessions, the announcement and registration form will make sure that you get those updates as well.

But yeah, please just let us know if you want us to register you and we'll

We'll take care of that.

For kind of an update on the partnership and where they are in their build as well as the process with the localities to get an OA signed.

The Dominion I think is looking for getting approval or applying to the SEC for its approvals by the end of the year.

They're basically a year ahead of schedule, I think, from the original five-year plan.

and then move them forward quickly.

That's all right.

Any more questions, comments?

Thank you, Christine.

Thank you, a lot of work going on.

All right, on either way, we're a closed session at this point.

We need to entertain a motion to enter to closed session for Code Virginia 2.2-37118.1.

Yes, I will read that.

What we'll do for the public, once we enter to closed session, everybody who's here for meeting will go to a waiting room and staff will leave the session.

The commissioners will go to closed session.

Once we finish the conversation or discussion, we'll come back in, we'll vote to exit closed session.

Okay, we're gonna need your cell phone.

All right, guys, I'm going to make the motion.

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

This motion needs a second.

Second.

Yes, Mr. Crane.

Mr. Smith?

Mr. Babiak?

Aye.

Mr. Barlow?

Yes.

Ms. Bishop?

Aye.

And Mr.

Aye.

So we're now entering closed session.

We'll place all those who are in public into a waiting room.

You're welcome to stay around if you so choose.

Once we finish the closed session, we'll come back in and vote to go into open session.

You'll be brought back in for a vote's taking.

Yes, we do.

Good call.

Thank you for reminding us to do that.

Yes, excuse me.

I'm putting everyone in the waiting room before I remove myself.

Thank you.

We have completed our closed session.

Mr. Chairman, I, Jesse Rutherford, move that the commission exit closed session.

Ms. Price, who was the second owner?

Sandy Cadeo, roll call.

Yes.

Herring.

Mr. Chairman, I, Jesse Rutherford, move that the Commission certify that, to the best of each member's knowledge, 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, or considered in the closed session.

This motion needs a second.

Second.

We have a second from Donna.

Mr. Smith?

Mr. Babiak?

Aye.

Mr. Barlow?

Yes.

Ms. Bishop?

Aye.

Mr. Rutherford?

Aye.

And Mr.

Aye.

Commissioners, do we have any business coming out of closed session?

I think we do.

OK. You want to go ahead and start or?

Yes, I can start.

And Tommy and Donna, you all follow after I'm done?

I move that, and I'm going to read a resolution so that it is accurate and for the record.

I move that whereas at its

February 4th, 2021 meeting.

I moved that we, cause I can't say, it doesn't have a draft number.

I'm going to read this and we're going to say yes.

Okay.

Basically moving from our February 4th meeting, we agreed to appoint Christine Jacobs as the interim executive director, effective the 15th of February.

The approved resolution also endorsed a slow and deliberate effort to permanently fill the position of executive director to allow organizational changes to occur to meet the regional services needs of the commission as created by post COVID-19 needs and activities.

The resolution further provided for 120 day review of the interim executive director and agency functions during this term.

And whereas at its June 3rd, 2021 regular meeting,

The commission conducted such review.

Now, therefore be it resolved that the commission continues the appointment of Christine Jacobs as the interim executive director to December 31st of 2021.

And be it resolved further that during this period, Christine Jacobs will continue to receive a 20% interim pay increase annualized in other job-related benefits, parking, delivery, patients,

and other direct operational expenses as previously afforded.

That is my motion.

So essentially to allow Christine to continue as the interim director to December 31st.

We have a second.

Second.

We have a proper second.

Yes.

Herring, Mr.

Which one do I have here?

I have a second motion, and that is a resolution for the TJPDC commission to commence with internal solicitation of an executive director to commence 7-1-21.

And the deputy director is to be the contact person.

We have a motion and a second.

Take your time.

All right, Mr. O'Brien?

Aye.

Mr. Smith?

there, Ms. Wilkinson?

Aye.

Mr. Babiak?

Aye.

Ms. Bishop?

Aye.

And Mr.

Aye.

The motion carries.

Thank you very much.

I have a proper motion.

We have a second.

Mr. Payne, Mr. Stolzenberg, Mr. Galloway, Ms. Price?

Aye.

Mr. O'Brien?

Aye.

Mr. Smith?

Ms. Wilkinson?

Aye.

Miss Bishop?

Aye.

And Mr.

Aye.

The motion carries.

And just to reiterate to the public what we have voted on, we've extended the interdirectors, Christine Jacobs,

until December 31st, 2021.

We've issued the TJPDC with the Dev Director as the point of contact to start the internal process of searching for candidates for a position of the Executive Director and concurrently we're doing an RFP process for a potential search firm

to go on concurrently with the TJPDC search.

And both of that would also, the RFP process would begin July 1st, correct?

And that is done to minimize any downtime through its process.

All right, thanks everybody for that.

Moving on to the agenda items.

We are now at round table discussion.

So I appreciate everybody's patience with this.

We'll try to go around and I will go by the squares that I see on the screen.

Thank you.

I have a lot of things.

I'll be very quick.

We spent a good bit of time last night at our board meeting approving amendments to our zoning text chapter of our county ordinance.

I will summarize that primarily in recognition of the complexities of development in order to give more flexibility and time for both the developers and county staff.

Secondly, our economic outlook is looking a lot better than we anticipated some time ago and so that's giving us a little more breathing room.

and I believe will open up the opportunities for us to do some things we had to put on hold last year.

One of the things we recognize, as I mentioned earlier, is that our public safety personnel, their pay scale had fallen behind our competitive market rate.

So we are going to approve an additional 3% pay raise.

All other county staff will get a 2%.

This will be a 5% for our public safety personnel.

We have a fairly restrictive homestay regulation in Albemarle County.

They may advertise on something like Airbnb, but they are a collateral use of a primary residence that generates some income rather than a primary income producing activity of a residential property.

And we continue to deal with that.

We expect in August that the county staff will come back to us

for further discussion on tweaking our ordinance.

We have a significant item going on right now with regard to the overlapping jurisdictional responsibilities of the school board in terms of creating sufficient seats in buildings for students and the Board of Supervisors jurisdictional

actions with regard to development.

Right now we've got an elementary school that we're potentially looking at having to take the fifth grade and transfer to one of our middle schools.

And then not all of those students would actually then stay at that middle school in sixth grade if this is what is approved.

So we're looking at two years of disruption as a result of the pandemic, some of the students going to a middle school for their last year of elementary school and then to another middle school.

So that's not a final decision yet, but it clearly has generated a lot of interest among our community and both the board of supervisors and the school board are paying a lot of attention to that.

Some really good news.

The Rivanna River Greenway, which is a path from Milton all the way through Charlottesville, is being extended.

This is also known as the Old Mills Trail.

Basically, as I mentioned, from Milton to Charlottesville, with appreciation to Monticello and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, they've been able to acquire some properties and will allow this greenway to extend.

Thank you.

Well, I think we did one of the best things we've done since I've been on the board.

And that is we gave tax benefits to the elderly and the disabled.

We raised the qualifying cap from $100,000 to $200,000.

And we also raised the amount

that can be written directly off your taxes from 1,000 to 2,000, which I think as far as our elderly are concerned, it was a big step.

Thank you for that.

Appreciate that.

Yeah, that's pretty much about it.

Your next one, sir.

And I'm getting my muted.

Sorry, hang on.

I'm here.

I think I'm here.

Bob, what you do, Bob, you turn the volume down on your computer, which happens to get a real bad echo.

Just turn the volume down or off on your computer, because as we're speaking, it's coming through your phone and the computer.

And then Christine will unmute you on her phone this time.

We have a lot of things that have already happened, especially in the economic development

into the ag-forestal area to show our commitment of trying to preserve the predominant portion of Louisa, the remaining rural, while we again pursue the economic development opportunities along the four interchange exits along 64 and the general Lake Anna area.

And of course, the General Water Authority

So I'll end on a high note.

Thank you, sir.

I would just comment that we have made a little more progress with our parallel road system in Rutgersville, parallel roads with Route 29.

and I had mentioned earlier about a couple of new apartment developments along that are now connected at each end to other roads that connect to 29 and other spots.

All right.

Thank you.

Yeah, so we also, excuse me, are looking, we're evaluating our zoning ordinances regarding short term rentals, short term lodging, event spaces,

Campground, stuff like that, residential versus commercial, that aspect of it.

So that's something we're also looking into.

Christine mentioned the Gladstone Depot TAP application.

The Friends of Gladstone Depot is a nonprofit agency that purchased this property from the railway from CSX.

So it was not, it's still not designated.

It's not zoned right now.

That's actually going to the board on Tuesday.

They're going to be designating that B1

They're going to be moving that train station, converting it to a community center and transportation museum for the community there.

And then I also mentioned we are going to be issuing an RFP to hire a consultant for our comprehensive plan update, hoping to get that out by the end of this month and be underway in the fall.

Thank you very much.

Yes, first and foremost, aside from the business, I want to recognize my daughter who just graduated from UVA publicly.

And then I don't have college payments any longer, which is wonderful.

The second, though, would be the board during budget season voted 5-0 for the budget, which is always a positive sign.

We also voted

So that's a very positive step for Fluvanna.

I think it really takes our CIP budget and moves it forward.

And that's been a necessary step for quite some time.

We've had some really positive news in the sense that we are, it's not yet approved, but I think the board is moving in the direction with an agreement with Dominion Power Plant at the Bremo Bluff Station, whereby they will retain their coal ash ponds

Tapped and sealed and covered in Fluvanna and they are proffering close to 50 million dollars for that.

So that's a big bonus for Fluvanna in terms of being able to ensure that the water quality in the Fork Union area remains stable and is not affected by any of their efforts and will help Fluvanna County not only on the

Economic Development side in the Fork Union area, but also on its master plan for water and sewer.

So we really view that as a positive step.

Of course, not approved, but I think the board is leaning in that direction.

Likewise, we have a continued interest in Zions Crossroads area.

We have some developers that are looking to expand into that area, which is wonderful, both in terms of housing and commercial investments.

And one of the challenges that we're facing right now and I'm hoping to present to the board is affordable housing at the Colonial Circle development at the corner of 53 and Lake Monticello Road.

We have the Pinnacle Group, which I think by all accounts, most of the folks that I've spoken to does a really good job.

O'Brien proposing an affordable housing portion for apartment buildings.

And as we know, housing is really spiraling out of control of most individuals pocketbook.

So the board will be taking that on and that will be a challenge.

But I think a good discussion and a positive thing for the board to review.

So in general I'd say things are very positive for that and we're excited about the future and with the new agreement with Firefly and the broadband authority, not authority, but with the agreements that Dominion and

Rappahannock, and Sivak have put together for broadband.

Fluvanna is going to have a really unique advantage in the sense that almost every one of its homes will have access to fiber internet, which is fantastic.

I'll leave it at that.

Thank you, sir.

Appreciate that.

All right, Mr. Rutherford.

Hey, first and foremost, I want to thank you all for appointing me as chairman.

It's been a great experience to be underneath the Dale and following him.

He's taught me a lot.

And of course, I'm going to be glad to say, hopefully, and I'm planning on him pushing for us to be live in August.

So make sure you all are ready for that.

We might need to throw a party.

I think.

Dale here has only seen y'all about six times in two years, so, but good on him.

He's excited to keep going forward and hopefully we'll have a very productive 2021.

Yeah, just to reiterate, you know, we continue to have major leaps and bounds in fiber build out across Nelson County.

We are targeting some very, some lower income areas such as Schuyler, near Donna and them,

maybe I think they were gonna jump across the line a little bit for y'all.

So hitting all of Schuyler proper, hitting large portions of Arrington and Shipman, it's been a life changer and we're watching that slowly develop new industries.

I think one thing that is not talked about enough is watching how many of my constituents have gone from full-time working in the office to, if not similar to how we operate at TJPDC,

not part-time working in the office, but full-time working at home.

It's been really intriguing to see artisans start creating new businesses and actually seeing post offices get busier.

Post offices, I've actually started receiving that notice that they're starting to see more packages and more commerce happen.

Beyond that, we have some major efforts with our comprehensive plan, which leads me to the next question.

Christine, we do need to talk about that at some point.

And Dylan's got a lot of work

We're happy to keep moving forward.

We're optimistic for the TAP funding.

So if y'all have any influence on those boards, please say Livingston and Gladstone are projects that you like.

But beyond that, I again want to reiterate thanking y'all for appointing me to be the chairman for this coming year.

All right, and lastly, Greene County.

We actually have a Starbucks, too.

Actually, the walls are going up.

So I think Greene County will actually have a Starbucks before Louisa.

So I'm going to take pride in that fact where I can get it.

So that's why we actually have entered into a, I guess, memorandum with CBAC for them to look through Greene County to see what they can do for us to come back to us in August.

We're very hopeful that we can utilize their services and REC services to bring broadband to Greene County.

Finally, we're looking at if we approve it goes forward, possibly 2024, all that's up in the air right now.

There's no cost associated with that as of right now.

We do expect it to be quite expensive because of our terrain, but it's still a possibility which we did not have six months ago.

So we're very grateful for that.

Retail rebound, there was an article in the Free Enterprise Forum that Greene actually leads the area in retail rebound, retail rebound of 24.48%, which is not really surprising because we have a few big box stores, one, and Lowe's, if you will, and a few others, most of our sales are retail in general, and so I think the larger localities probably have a lot of restaurants that probably went under during COVID,

We may have added a few that did, and we actually did, but I think for us, the retail stores, big box stores, saw significant growth, and we also saw significant growth in ARB and Bs in our tourism industry.

We are still going through a legal situation, Rep. Annex Service Authority.

The court heard our case last week.

We're waiting for a legal decision.

Madison and Orange County did vote to allow us to leave the authority,

So we should be out of the Rapidan Service Authority in the near future.

What that means for us is that we can actually begin to build the reservoir that we've already spent between $11 to $13 million on that the Rapidan Service Authority was involved with.

So that's our 50-year water plan.

So that process is starting hopefully within the next year.

We'll be out.

We'll have the water authority either in a green pronounced control

or through a public-private partnership with another entity, and we'll start the process to actually move forward again on our reservoir, which is very good news.

A budget process was completed.

What I found surprising during our budget process is we had only one individual speak, and I was the superintendent of the schools, on the budget or speak on the taxes.

No one spoke on the tax equalization.

And yet we had a presentation

where the visitor center wanted to pave their parking lot for $33,000 and more time was spent on the $33,000.

There really wasn't really $33,000.

It was $13,000 because it cost them $40,000 to pave a certain portion and do the entire parking lot.

And those in opposition were speaking of the cost and the estimates received were good, but they were still against it.

So more people spoke on the $33,000

Project that spoke on an $88 million budget this year.

And I'm assuming that's related to COVID.

I found that very surprising.

And I'm beginning to see traffic pick up since the restrictions have relaxed.

I'm sure all of you have as well.

I noticed the Charlottesville 49 corridor in Greene County.

I'm seeing the traffic getting picked back up.

I'm assuming that's an indication that people are traveling more or that they're actually going to the office more frequently.

And our schools will actually have both graduations this week.

Tomorrow night is a 2020 graduation and Saturday is a 2021 graduation.

And they'll be held without restrictions at this point in time.

So we went from not sure of how the parents could attend and give them tickets and limit number two, we're back to normal within a couple of days.

and our school division will end up tomorrow.

I think we're one of four divisions across Commonwealth that opened up and we never closed related to COVID.

So I take pride in that fact.

And that's all I have for Greene at this point.

Next meeting will be held August the 5th.

And as it's rubber state, hopefully it will be in person so we don't have to deal with technical difficulties.

I do appreciate everybody's patience.

As we've gone through tonight, we did some thunderstorms in the area.

And we did, I think the first virtual meeting we did, I think I went out.

So we ended the same way we started.

As you can see, we're in a room together with space department.

We're not wearing masks based on new mandates.

So I'm hoping to see each of you again next meeting.

And we have several topics next meeting.

We have a public hearing on the IGR, approval for the application, the resolution housing preservation grant, state master agreement, the draft and solid waste plan and delivery of the draft fiscal year 23 projected budget.

And before I ask for a motion to adjourn, it's been a pleasure and honor to serve as your chair for the past two years.

I can honestly say that I am very honored to be part of this group and that each of you as members, sometimes I try to live up to your examples, and I include staff as well.

I can remember when Mr. Randolph asked if I was interested in running, I was actually deciding whether to run for office or not.

and Greene County again.

So there's a portion of Greene County that may not appreciate the fact that I was asked to be chair because I decided to run for office to be chair of TJPDC.

So you may hear some emails come your way as time goes on.

There's also a portion that may, thank you, Levin.

I want to say to each of you, I know what you do on a daily basis and during the past year and a half,

It's been very difficult to be in public office during this current situation.

And each of your local governments did an amazing job.

And just to hear you around to have a discussion at each meeting with each of you have accomplished in spite of the obstacles that have been before you.

And it's also important point that no public official has served during a situation like this, I think for a hundred years.

or more.

Well, not in the PDC history ever.

Congratulations.

So guys, thanks a lot.

So that's stated since we have gone over, which is also a first.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you.

All right, with that said, Sandy, you do a roll call vote.

And next time we do it,

We won't have to do a roll call vote probably.

I was just celebrating that this is the last time I'll have to do that.

And it turns out I forgot how to do it.

Ms. Price?

Aye.

Mr. O'Brien?

Aye.

Ms. Wilkinson?

Aye.

Mr. Babyok?

Aye.

Ms. Bishop.

Aye.

And Mr.

Aye.

Guys, enjoy your rest of the evening.

Enjoy your month off and your July.

Be safe out there.

And Tony, congratulations again.

And if you want to treat members of the Commission to dinner with the money you're saving, I don't think anybody would complain, but that's really up to you.

It's now adjourned.